Chapter 12
PUTTING HIS STAMP ON THE PRESIDENCY
As President Tyler tried to rally support for his doomed Exchequer plan, he also sought to enlist Congress in devising solutions for the other financial difficulties the federal government faced at the beginning of 1842. Chief among these was the deficit. In his annual message, Tyler had alluded to a shortfall of over $627,000. Treasury Secretary Forward prepared a more detailed report that elaborated on just how dire the situation was. Federal spending in 1841 exceeded revenue by nearly 60 percent. The deficit, of course, further ballooned the national debt. The projected deficit for 1842 was $14 million. Quite simply, the federal government was teetering dangerously close to being unable to pay its bills.1
By the time he returned to Washington in December 1841, Tyler had concluded that he would have to give a little on his longstanding aversion to higher tariffs. With only $5 million of the proposed $12 million in Treasury bonds subscribed, the government needed to find another way to raise funds. The modest tariff passed during the special session did little to help, raising rates on only a limited number of goods, and then only to 20 percent.
According to the terms of the Compromise Tariff of 1833, rates on most other goods would fall on January 1, 1842, and again on June 30, when they would finally stand at the agreed-upon maximum 20-percent ad valorem rate. Obviously, however, a reduction in tariff rates meant a reduction in tariff revenue for the federal government.
In his December 1841 message to Congress, Tyler expressed hope that the government could collect the revenue it needed to reduce the deficit with tariff rates no higher than 20 percent. After all, he had been part of the Senate negotiations that settled on that figure eight years earlier and could not now repudiate the hallowed compromise without personal embarrassment and charges of inconsistency. The last thing he wanted now was to offer the Democrats a rhetorical club with which to beat him. Already assailed by the Whigs, he could ill afford being buffeted by the majorities of both parties on an issue that had in part defined his career.2
Tyler also wanted tariff rates no higher than 20 percent so that the states could still receive the distribution of the proceeds from the sale of public lands. According to the terms of an amendment to the Land Act of September 1841—which Tyler signed into law during the special session—distribution would cease if tariff rates rose above 20 percent after June 30. This provision had been added to the bill as an amendment to placate southern Democrats, some southern Whigs, and northerners who advocated free trade. They all opposed distribution in principle because they believed that, if the revenue from the sale of public lands could not be added to the Treasury, the government would seek an alternative source of revenue and would raise tariff rates. Tyler had long supported distribution but had these same reservations. In fact, he had signed the bill from the special session into law only because it contained the amendment; it had been a condition for his acceptance. Despite the potential salutary effect of distribution, he would not hesitate to abandon it if the Whigs endangered the Compromise of 1833 and pushed for rates higher than 20 percent.3
By early 1842, however, the president recognized that keeping tariff rates at 20 percent would do little to address the government’s budget shortfall. He began to hint that he might sanction higher tariffs, even pointing out that Congress could subject some goods to a higher variable rate—what was known as “discrimination”—in order to provide the most revenue. He was willing to suspend his longstanding distrust of protection, perhaps in part, as one historian points out, to gain favor with protariff states like Pennsylvania, whose support he would need to win the presidency in 1844. But Tyler made clear that he was amenable to higher rates only because the government needed money and needed it fast. “So long as the duties shall be laid with distinct reference to the wants of the Treasury,” he told Congress, “no well-founded objection can exist against them.”4
Unfortunately, the link between tariff rates and distribution forged during the special session became the raw material for yet another fight between President Tyler and the Whig majority. It took some time before that reality became clear, however, and in the meantime, Congress dithered. Tyler’s pleas for lawmakers to revise the tariff were ignored during the entire month of January and early February 1842. The Whigs seemed to want to delay any substantive action on the deficit to place the president in an uncomfortable position and cause the American people to heap blame for the bad economy on the administration. They perhaps also wanted citizens to wonder whether the country would be better off with a national bank. Clay spoke at length in the Senate of the need for a constitutional amendment to allow Congress to override a presidential veto with a simple majority rather than the legally mandated two-thirds and to dispose of the pocket veto. This idea went nowhere. He also sought a constitutional amendment that would formally separate the purse from the sword by mandating that Congress, not the president, appoint the Treasury secretary, as well as one that would impose a one-term limit on the presidency. These ideas, too, went nowhere.
On February 15 Clay presented a series of eleven resolutions designed as a “system of policy” to invigorate the economy. He called for retrenchment in government spending. He denigrated the bond issues and loans with which the government under both Van Buren and Tyler had attempted to raise money and argued instead for the need to raise tariff rates above 20 percent; raising them to 30 percent (with a home valuation) would add between six and seven million dollars. The Whig leader also made clear that he wanted the distribution of the proceeds from the sale of public lands to continue, which meant that the portion of the Land Act of 1841 (passed during the special session) prohibiting it if tariff rates rose would have to be repealed. He knew the president vigorously opposed this course of action.5
Yet despite his avowal that confidence in the solvency of the federal government was essential to the nation’s economic recovery, Clay seemed in no hurry to spur his Senate charges into action. Nor did House members seem inclined to get moving. Meanwhile, the deficit continued to grow, while the Treasury was running out of money. In early March Tyler sent an urgent message to the House of Representatives informing its members that requisitions from the War and Navy Departments for the months of March, April, and May would create an additional deficit of $3 million. “I can not bring myself, however, to believe,” the president wrote, “that it will enter into the view of any department of the Government to arrest works of defense now in progress.” He referred to the “unsettled condition of our foreign relations” with Britain—an allusion to the ongoing McLeod Affair—and urged Congress to act. Without saying so explicitly, Tyler clearly believed the intransigent lawmakers were now worsening his negotiating position with the British and threatening his authority as commander in chief.6
Navy Secretary Upshur was livid. What he called “our do nothing Congress” had been “three months in session and have not matured a single important measure! They seem to look with absolute indifference upon all the high interests of the country,” he griped by letter to Beverley Tucker, “and waste their time in trifling partisan maneuvering, or in disgraceful personal squabbles.” Upshur, whose department felt the sting of congressional inaction, contended that the administration was being treated unfairly and believed that the American people were the ones who suffered. By March 1842, he had come to appreciate the president and began to defend him against Tucker’s persistent charges that he was not moving fast enough on creating a states’ rights party. The navy secretary now had his own stake in the administration, and his letters no longer contained exasperated grumblings about Tyler. He was impressed with his chief’s devotion to the public good. “I can say with strict and literal truth,” Upshur declared, “that I have not heard from him, nor from any one member of his cabinet, any counsel, opinion, or suggestion unbecoming an honest man and a true lover of his country.” The administration was also “free from every corrupt and improper design.” He was proud to be a part of Tyler’s cabinet. “Depend on it, Judge, the men in power are much more to be relied on than those who are seeking to turn them out.”7
Unfortunately for Upshur and for President Tyler, the Whig members of Congress held all of the cards. They controlled the legislative calendar and still felt no sense of urgency. On March 25 Tyler sent another—lengthier—plea to both chambers requesting action that would stave off financial disaster. The tone of the message conveyed a controlled anger; the president barely kept his simmering resentment under wraps as he charged the members of Congress with having abdicated their responsibilities to the American people.
Tyler now openly acknowledged that raising tariff rates above 20 percent on at least some imports was unavoidable. Gone was the language with which he had attempted to finesse this reality in his early March message to Congress. He pointed out—in a striking departure from a principle that had characterized the entirety of his political career up to this point—that raising the rates would “necessarily affor[d] incidental protection for manufacturing.”
John Tyler supported protection! Things had gotten bad. While the president had not entirely uprooted his free-trade moorings, and while he wrote that he departed from the Compromise of 1833 with “sincere regret,” he nevertheless recognized that fealty to long-cherished ideals would not help the country at this point. He would have to deviate from the principles that had been his since he was a student of Bishop Madison’s at William and Mary. Even Upshur had accepted this view. “The free trade men of the South must relax their principles a little,” he wrote Tucker. “We shall never maintain our specie payments without the aid of our tariff system.” Thus another blow was struck against Tucker’s dream of a states’ rights party. Yet again, Tyler was playing the part of a moderate and looking for a middle ground, sacrificing his principles for the good of the country.
Staking out a position on that middle ground also meant abiding by the provision of the Land Act of 1841 that had been signed into law during the special session mandating the end of distribution once tariff rates climbed beyond 20 percent. Tyler made clear he intended to honor that law. He called for floating a loan of $15 million to tide over the Treasury until money started flowing in from the more robust tariff schedules. As collateral, he proposed using the proceeds from the sale of public lands, which he argued could be put toward paying the interest on this loan right away. Thus, money that would have been funneled to the states through distribution would be deposited into the federal coffers. He acknowledged, however, that leaders in states that needed these funds for paying their own debts—which is to say most states—would be keenly disappointed.
The president had an answer for their concerns. Defending his support of higher tariffs, Tyler argued that the increased revenue would help shrink the federal deficit and thus place the credit of the national government “on durable foundations.” That, in turn, would “produce with the capitalist a feeling of entire confidence.” In other words, if the federal government could place itself on firm financial footing, the states would benefit in trickle-down fashion. Investors who had faith in the credit of the US government would be more willing to risk their money in state bonds once again, which would go a long way toward alleviating the harsh effects of the lingering depression and make up for the suspension of distribution. Tyler’s argument can best be described as a “glass half full” view, but, quite frankly, it was the only argument he could make.
Fully aware of how this argument would play among Whigs—remember, Clay had already proposed a resolution repealing the 20-percent provision in the Land Act—Tyler framed it in terms of responsibility. “The Executive can do no more,” he intoned. “If the credit of the country be exposed to question, if the public defenses be broken down or weakened, if the whole administration of public affairs be embarrassed for want of the necessary means for conducting them with vigor and effect, I trust that this department of the Government will be found to have done all that was in its power to avert such evils, and will be acquitted of all just blame on account of them.” Simply put, Tyler was fed up. His patience had evaporated. It was time for Congress to act.8
While the president found support from the editorial pages of newspapers in Washington and New York, Clay refused to consider suspending distribution. Two days before Tyler’s latest message, Clay addressed from the Senate floor the arguments Democrats had recently made in support of the Compromise Tariff’s 20-percent mandate and the Land Act’s suspension provision. Specifically, he maintained that while the compromise did set the maximum tariff rate after June 30, 1842, at 20 percent, Congress could raise duties beyond that mark if the administration of the government required it. Moreover, he argued that placing the proceeds from the sale of public lands in the Treasury to pay off the debt instead of distributing them to the states was illegal. He reminded his fellow senators that the original distribution bill of 1833 had earmarked money from such sales to internal improvements, education, and colonization of free blacks in Africa. Therefore, the funds could not be used in the way that President Tyler—and most Democrats—intended to use them. Clay reiterated his position that tariff rates must be set higher than 20 percent and that distribution must continue.9
This was Clay’s penultimate speech in the Senate, having informed the Kentucky legislature that he intended to retire on March 31. Before leaving, he asked senators to vote on the eleven resolutions he had introduced back in February; two were approved outright, while nine were referred to committee. On the appointed day he bid farewell to his colleagues with a final speech that prompted tears from both the floor and galleries and applause throughout the chamber. Clay claimed that he was resigning to tamp down the conflict between Congress and the Tyler administration and to make it easier for legislation to receive the president’s signature; he also pleaded ill health. But everyone knew better: Clay was leaving to ready himself for what would undoubtedly be his last presidential run. Indeed, he seemed at this early date to be the frontrunner for the Whigs’ 1844 nomination, and many in the party offered support for his candidacy as soon as he retired.10
There is no record of what Tyler had to say about Clay’s resignation. Surely it provided at least some small degree of satisfaction. Upshur perhaps spoke for the president and the rest of the cabinet when he wrote: “Clay [was] the great obstacle to wholesome legislation. When he retires something may be done, and not before.” The navy secretary was convinced that the Whig majority had clashed with the Tyler administration for a “deliberate purpose to make Henry Clay president of the United States, even at the hazard of revolution.” Upshur was glad to be rid of the Kentuckian. It remained to be seen, however, whether the legislation the Whigs would send to Tyler’s desk during this session of Congress could be characterized as “wholesome.”11
President Tyler found a respite from the frustration and anger he experienced over politics in the social life of his administration. Despite the hard feelings between him and congressional opponents, his Thursday and Saturday evening drawing rooms remained popular with official Washington throughout the social season, which began with an open house on New Year’s Day and ran through mid-March. “I went yesterday with the multitudes to pay my respects to ‘Captain Tyler’ and Family,” one visitor reported on January 2, 1842. “There was a great deal of confusion, much crowding, and some rudeness, but not more of the first, and not so much of the last as I witnessed on like occasion when Mr. Jackson was our chief.”12
Tyler recognized that an active social calendar—dinners, drawing rooms, levees—might help him win adherents to a new third party. He invited guests accordingly. “His entertainments embrace both parties,” one senator noticed, “and about equal numbers at the same time.” Priscilla Tyler, who served as her father-in-law’s White House hostess, brought together rivals in Congress and provided the president with a forum to interact with his critics and supporters apart from the pressures of the normal workday. One female observer noted that “Clay Whigs and Van Buren Locofocos, and Tyler Americans” gathered in the lively atmosphere of carefully planned social events. Political differences were put aside—however briefly. Priscilla’s social functions, and the cordial mingling they encouraged, allowed Tyler to perform the covert political task of taking the temperature of those “Van Buren Locofocos” and assessing the strength of the “Tyler Americans.” The “Clay Whigs” he wrote off, of course, but he nevertheless attempted to lay the groundwork for building a coalition and did his best to gauge his chances for the 1844 election. In the wake of his failure to win support for the Exchequer, this became vitally important.13
Perhaps what was most important about the skill Priscilla showed as hostess was that it affected in a positive way the public perception of her father-in-law. Her grace and charm softened the harsh political judgments of the Whig press—ever so slightly. Tyler’s association with his beautiful and talented daughter-in-law enabled him to cultivate the good feelings of those who took advantage of the drawing room to make their acquaintance with the administration. Priscilla’s preparation for levees and state dinners, not to mention her presence at these affairs, created a favorable impression of the controversial president, one markedly different from what people formulated as he vetoed legislation and drove off his cabinet. “I have never seen a President whose port and manner were so commanding, and at the same time so acceptable to all who approached him,” one society woman commented. Comparing Tyler to Andrew Jackson, she continued that the Old Hero was “a man of much dignity of manner, and most imposing presence; but he was capricious, fastidious, irritable, and sometimes overbearing.” Not so the current White House resident. “President Tyler is abundantly courteous and graceful in his address.” One newspaper correspondent noted with approval that Tyler conducted himself “with a simple elegance which made it seem as though he never could have lived out of the precincts of the most polished court.” Indeed, he surprised many visitors to the White House. “It instantly struck me,” one commented, “that there was a moral energy in the president of which his enemies little dreamed.”14
As these accounts make clear, a stark contrast existed between the president without a party portrayed in the partisan newspapers and the actual John Tyler. Ever sensitive, he grew irritated when he was attacked in the press, even more so when these attacks were personal in nature. “The newspaper letter writers have become the curse of the age,” he complained in March 1842. “They think to manifest their diligence and talent by catching up every report however ridiculous and false, which is to be found on the Pennsylvania Avenue or elsewhere and forwarding it in a letter from Washington to their employers.” Tyler bitterly decried what he called the “retailers of these falsehoods” and resolved to “leave them wholly unheeded.”15
Unfortunately, he could no more do that than a leopard could change his spots. Being thin skinned was part of who he was. To his credit, though, he seems to have recognized this and soon crafted a strategy of cultivating friendly reporters on whom he could rely to write articles portraying him in a favorable light. For example, he gave Frank Thomas of Knickerbocker magazine exclusive access to the White House and allowed him to interview everyone who lived in the mansion, from family members to servants. Thomas took meals with the Tylers and made himself at home. The result was a laudatory article in the magazine that made the president seem down to earth and refreshingly candid, nothing at all like the caricatures found in the partisan press. Tyler also gave an interview to Anne Royall, a middle-aged widow who became the first prominent female journalist in the nation’s capital. If one account of the interview is accurate, however, he had little choice. Royall supposedly sat on his clothes while he swam in the Potomac a la John Quincy Adams and refused to leave until he had answered her questions. Tyler complied while standing neck deep in water.16
Tyler had clearly learned a valuable lesson during the special session in the summer of 1841 as he was vilified in the press: to change the public perception of him and generate a positive impression among the American people, he had to shape the message. It was a lesson the most skilled and media-savvy presidents—the two Roosevelts, Kennedy, and Reagan—learned to use to their advantage as well.
The happiest occasion of the 1842 social season occurred on January 31, when President Tyler’s daughter, eighteen-year-old Elizabeth, married twenty-one-year-old Williamsburg native William Waller in a small evening ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Reverend Hawley officiated. He had presided over President Harrison’s requiem the previous April and was no doubt glad to be back at the Executive Mansion under much happier circumstances. The cabinet secretaries and their wives, as well as a few of the foreign ministers, in addition to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Wise, joined the Tyler family for the nuptials. John Jones, the new owner and editor of the Daily Madisonian, was there, as was Dolley Madison, who had become a mentor to Priscilla and a family friend.17
Tyler had given two daughters away before Lizzy. Mary had been married in December 1835, and Letitia had wed James Semple in February 1839. A contemplative man, Tyler may have reflected on the marriages of Lizzy’s sisters as he watched her join young Waller at the front of the room. Mary’s was a successful union. She and her young family were doing well in Virginia’s Southside. The president wished he saw his oldest child more, of course—he always made that clear, sometimes not too gently—but he could rest assured that Henry Jones took good care of his daughter and made her happy. By contrast, Letty’s marriage was full of strife. What had seemed like a fortuitous match at first quickly turned sour as Letitia and her husband proved temperamentally unsuited for each other. Before long, the couple would be estranged, and Tyler would be forced to provide a respite for his daughter by finding his difficult son-in-law a job as a navy purser and sending him off to sea.
Tyler’s thoughts that night may also have turned to his own marriage. The happiness he felt for Lizzy and William was no doubt tempered when he looked at his own wife. Largely confined to her bedroom on the second floor since she came to the White House the previous spring, Letitia had made it downstairs—for apparently the one and only time—to see Lizzy get married. She usually spent her days quietly reading her prayer book or enjoying visits from her children in the family quarters. Priscilla brought her daughter, one-year-old Mary Fairlie, to see her grandmother nearly every day.
Letitia’s health had stabilized for a time after her 1839 stroke, but by early 1842, her condition had worsened. She could no longer speak without difficulty, and partial paralysis hampered her ability to move around freely. Tyler saw his two youngest children—fourteen-year-old Alice and eleven-year-old Tazewell—growing up without the benefit of their mother’s nurturing and wise counsel, gifts their older siblings cherished. He did his best to make his wife as comfortable as possible, but the demands of his job and the daily pressure he faced distracted him. Ironically, after spending all those years in national politics as an absentee husband and father, achieving the pinnacle of his political ambition gave him the opportunity to see his wife every night. Now that he could do so, Letitia was not the same woman—nor would she ever recover. Tyler thus bore a heavy emotional burden as he simultaneously dealt with the fractious Clay Whigs and faced the realization that his wife was slowly slipping away. It is also likely that the crisis in confidence he exhibited toward the end of the special session may be partially explained by the anguish he felt in his private life.
Priscilla did her best to provide her father-in-law with some relief from this suffering, and she usually succeeded. One morning she came rushing into his office and breathlessly informed him that Dolley Madison had arrived at the White House and wished to speak to him immediately. Tyler put his pen down, got up from his desk, and followed Priscilla out of the room. They went downstairs and found his granddaughter, little Mary Fairlie, waiting for them. Priscilla had dressed the child to resemble Mrs. Madison, complete with a turban and shawl and a little rouge for her cheeks, and had coached her on an imitation of the venerable woman’s accent. Tyler threw his head back and roared laughter.18
Priscilla’s greatest triumph took place as she and the president hosted the last levee of the 1842 season. On the night of March 15, a reported 3,000 revelers thronged the White House to honor two famous guests: Washington Irving, the celebrated American author, whom Tyler had just named minister to Spain, and Charles Dickens, whom he had met a few days earlier. The rooms of the mansion were “filled to overflowing,” with the East Room, in the words of one attendee, a “complete jam.” The White House was clearly the place to be that evening. The president and his daughter-in-law had succeeded yet again. And they would continue to do so as their relationship flourished. Priscilla’s devotion to him and to his presidency sustained Tyler through some extraordinarily trying times in the spring and summer of 1842, not all of which had to do with politics.19
One such difficulty involved John Jr.’s marriage, which was a source of stress for the entire family. Mattie Tyler and the couple’s son, two-and-a-half-year-old James Rochelle Tyler, had not followed John Jr. to Washington when his father became president, choosing instead to remain at their home in Southampton County. John had repeatedly begged his wife to join him at the White House but had not been successful in getting her to leave the life she knew in Virginia. Theirs was a seriously strained union.
In April 1842 John Jr. informed Mattie that he intended to seek a divorce. He asked a Williamsburg attorney, George Washington Southall, to handle the suit. “All the facts in the case,” he wrote in a letter to Southall, “I will submit to you as soon as I can get to Wmsburg.” That proved easier said than done, given John Jr.’s responsibilities as his father’s private secretary. Late in May he wrote to Southall again, summarizing the grounds for which he intended to pursue the divorce in court. Mattie was guilty of “willful & continued absence,” he alleged, despite his “oft repeated prayers & solicitations on his part for her to come to him.” According to John, there were no reasons to prevent her from moving to Washington.20
Why he chose the spring of 1842 to begin divorce proceedings is unclear. The couple had been separated since shortly after their son’s birth in September 1839—a little over one year into their marriage and well before the time John Tyler assumed the presidency and John Jr. moved to Washington. Evidently, John Jr. had lived for some time with his parents and younger siblings at their home in Williamsburg, while Mattie remained at the house the couple shared at the outset of their marriage. John Jr. made several visits to Southampton County with the intention of saving his marriage and persuading his wife to make the move to Washington.
Those visits provided the second grounds for the divorce. John Jr. claimed that whenever he went to see his wife, her brother, James Rochelle, threatened him with “eminent danger.” In fact, on one of these visits, James had assaulted him physically. John Jr. claimed that “his life [had] been once attempted” by his brother-in-law. Though he may have exaggerated the seriousness of what had happened on this particular occasion, he nevertheless informed Southall that he could “prove [it] by the best testimony.” It may actually have been Rochelle who provided the motivation for John Jr. to seek the divorce. But since he did not specify the date of the violent encounter with his brother-in-law, it is difficult to say with certainty.21
For his part, President Tyler tried to mend fences by offering Rochelle a midshipman’s commission in the US Navy, which the young man accepted. Perhaps sending troublesome in-laws to sea was the best idea he could think of for his children’s difficult marriages—at least this way John Jr. could visit his wife without fearing he would lose life or limb. Tyler also suggested to Mattie’s mother that perhaps the two families could purchase an estate near Washington where the estranged couple could live together and work on their marriage. “Can we not by uniting accomplish their settlement in life?” he asked. Tyler confessed that he was “in no condition to make very heavy advances” but assured Mrs. Rochelle that “with a suitable start I have not the slightest fear of John’s ultimate success.” Mattie’s mother, Martha, was not swayed and refused the request.22
John Jr. may have begun divorce proceedings, but Mattie seemed to have been the one who had the grounds for dissolution of their marriage. John’s claim that she was willfully absent despite his pleas for her to move to Washington is, of course, but one side of the story. Perhaps she had sound reasons for refusing to leave Virginia. John Jr. drank too much and lacked direction and maturity. He had tried intermittently for at least four years to establish a career at the bar but was never able to complete his studies or make the contacts necessary for success in the legal profession, despite his father’s best efforts to steer him along the proper course. John Jr. had much going for him—he was strikingly handsome, possessed a bright mind, and enjoyed family connections—but he never seemed interested in putting these qualities to good use for himself and his young family. Tyler had hired his son as his private secretary—and paid him out of his own salary—in part because he was trying to impose some structure on the young man’s life. It had done little good.
Mattie’s seemingly self-imposed exile in Virginia may have been a way for her to insulate herself from the heartache of her husband’s weakness and dissipated habits. No doubt she resented his drinking. Her brother’s behavior toward him also may indicate that John Jr. was abusive—perhaps physically—which of course could have been the result of his having had too much to drink. Moreover, her mother’s refusal to aid his father in trying to salvage the couple’s marriage may speak to her unwillingness to subject her daughter to more difficulty. In any event, John Jr. and Mattie never divorced. They even had two more children together—Letitia Christian, born in 1844, and Martha Rochelle, born in 1846.
While John Jr.’s marital difficulties troubled him greatly, President Tyler found much to be pleased with in his daughter Lizzy’s marriage. After their White House wedding, she and William moved to Williamsburg, where he was attempting to carve out a law career for himself as well as become a successful farmer. Tyler missed Lizzy and wanted her to write. “Does Mr. Waller engross all your care and love and attention,” he needled his newlywed daughter, “so that fifteen minutes cannot be given to me?” Tyler monitored the Wallers from Washington and was keenly interested in his son-in-law’s career. “Has Mr. Waller made a speech at the bar,” he asked, “or does he think only of farming?” He complained about his workload and regretted that it kept him from visiting. “I would give much to see you both,” he told Lizzy, “but when or how unless you come here, I know not.”23
Tyler also longed to see his oldest child, Mary. While the pressure of his responsibilities as president had prevented him from writing to her as much as would have liked, he was nevertheless able to maintain the same kind of relationship with her that he had always enjoyed. During the summer of 1842, he sent her a letter responding to her report of an uncomfortable social situation she experienced. Mary was now nearly twenty-seven years old, had been married for more than six years, and was a mother herself, but she was still her father’s little girl. He continued to gently dispense advice like he did when she was a teenager. “I write now mostly to say that I regret to perceive that you suffer yourself to be affected by the deportment of the bad people around you,” he told her. “Never give a thought to them. They are entirely unworthy of giving you the slightest concern.” Tyler soothed his daughter and allayed the fears she had expressed about how unsavory people might affect her reputation. “What can they do or say to change the good opinion of any person towards you? Be perfectly assured that other people, whatever may be outward appearances, know them most thoroughly, and I would, therefore, have you go along as if they did not exist.” That way, he concluded, “you obtain the mastery over them.”
In this letter Tyler returned to another theme that for so long had characterized his relationship with Mary: the care of Letitia. “Your mother’s health is bad,” he reported. “Her mind is greatly prostrated by her disease, and she seems quite anxious to have you with her.” He had suggested some months before that Mary leave Woodlawn, her plantation in Virginia, and move into the White House, where she could help tend to her mother and make her more comfortable. “I still think,” Tyler maintained, “that you would be more happy here than elsewhere.” He even suggested that she accompany her brother back to Washington after he had concluded business (perhaps relating to the divorce) in Virginia. “John will be in Charles City on court day,” her father informed her, “and then you must come on.”24
Tyler’s letter to Mary indicates that on some level he realized his wife did not have much longer to live. Having relied on his daughter years ago to care for Letitia while he served in the House and Senate, Tyler knew that she was capable—perhaps more so than anyone else—of putting her mother at ease. No doubt he wanted to honor Letitia’s wishes and make her as comfortable and as happy as he possibly could. But Tyler also may have wanted his daughter in Washington because he could no longer bear the emotional strain of Letitia’s illness while he dealt with the Whigs in Congress. His presidency had exacted such a heavy toll from him that he now found himself almost desperate to find more ballast in his family. Priscilla helped a great deal in this regard. Mary, however, had always been his rock and a source of strength, and the relationship she shared with her mother made her especially well-suited to assume this new burden. Her former role as Letitia’s caregiver had allowed her father to pursue his ambitions and build his political career. Now, as he sought a way to win election to the presidency in his own right in 1844, he needed Mary again. As he had as a younger man, Tyler still struggled to reconcile his public and private lives.
We do not know if Mary moved to Washington. She was three months pregnant in July 1842, when her father sent the letter imploring her to come, and may have felt that her health and her family responsibilities in Virginia made such a move impossible. We have no letters explaining her decision or giving an indication of how her mother’s worsening condition affected her. There are two pieces of evidence, however, that might indicate she did indeed come to Washington. Laura Holloway, a nineteenth-century chronicler of the First Ladies, mentions that Mary (and her sister Letitia Semple) made “temporary visits.” Perhaps one of those visits was in the summer of 1842. Also, Mary’s third child, Robert Tyler Jones, was born in the White House on January 24, 1843. It is unclear when she arrived, though. Quite possibly, she hastened to Washington soon after receiving Tyler’s letter and stayed through the next winter. By the time Robert was born, however, her mother had died.
Priscilla gave birth to her second child—in the White House—in late spring or early summer 1842. The baby girl was named Letitia in honor of her grandmother. The president arranged for Priscilla’s two children, as well as for Alice and Tazewell, to be christened in the mansion on the Fourth of July. The family enjoyed a “splendid” fireworks display on the White House grounds that night, but Tyler was more poignantly affected by the baptisms, which he called the “most interesting matter” of the day. Never a regular churchgoer, he seemed to find peace in the small ceremony. Perhaps the trial of his wife’s illness and her now very visible decline had stirred thoughts of the afterlife and Christian salvation. Now more than ever, he needed his religious faith, which he hoped to instill in the children.25
President Tyler must have wondered how long it was going to take or what disaster had to befall the country before Congress addressed the dismal state of the nation’s finances. His admonition in late March 1842 to both houses to get moving largely failed to yield results in April and May. Congress did augment the loan bill passed during the special session, as Tyler had requested in his first annual message in December 1841, but there was no movement at all on the tariff or distribution. Whigs were determined to have their cake and eat it too—a higher tariff and distribution—and were willing to wait out the president, gambling that if they waited long enough, he would be forced to sign whatever they sent to his desk or risk the wrath of the American people.26
Back home in Kentucky, Henry Clay wrote letters to leading Whigs in Washington, urging them, cajoling them, to stand firm on what the party wanted and steeling them for the renewed fight with Tyler. He had publicly promised that he would not be an “idle or indifferent spectator” in retirement and pledged that he would maintain his “interest in the welfare of the Union.” Throughout the summer of 1842, he made good on that promise.27
Instead of addressing the country’s financial needs in April and May, the Whigs seemed content to disparage Tyler among themselves, with “imbecile” being the most preferred epithet. They created what later political pundits would call an “echo chamber,” writing letters and giving speeches that were long on self-righteous criticism of the president but short on feasible policy ideas. “Of all shallow, ignorant, weak, vain & obstinate fools that ever cursed a free people, Tyler is the worst,” proclaimed Kentucky congressman Garrett Davis, with sentiments that captured the attitude of most congressional Whigs toward the president. These ad hominem attacks, even coming (as most did) in private, made it appear as if the Whigs believed they would never be called to account by the voters. They arrogantly assumed that the American people took their side in the fight with Tyler. Some suggested that the president should resign. To make matters worse, many Whigs seemed more interested in highlighting Tyler’s apparent inconsistency on distribution than in recognizing that the fragile state of the country’s finances had forced him to abandon his longstanding support of the policy. What the Madisonian called “the mildew of party spirit” had poisoned the legislative process.28
Congressional inactivity could not last forever. As much as the Whigs attempted to portray the president as an obstructionist who foreclosed their earnest efforts to settle the currency question and relieve the nation’s financial woes, they eventually realized they could not stand idly by for the entire session while the government ran out of money. Again, the Compromise Tariff of 1833 had stipulated that on July 1, 1842, rates across the board would automatically fall to 20 percent. Whigs found this unacceptable; they wanted rates to stay above 20 percent and did not want June 30 to come and go without ensuring that some other measure replaced the Compromise Tariff. But a new law superseding the 1833 statute would have to be passed before rates could be raised above 20 percent after June 30.
How serious were the Whigs in trying to make this happen? One congressman noted that “not one third of the members stay in the hall during the debate on the tariff bill.” When it became obvious that Congress had waited too long to fully debate a new tariff bill, and that there would be no new law before the June 30 deadline, from Kentucky Clay suggested that the House Ways and Means Committee devise a “temporary continuation of the existing law” that could be passed until a new bill had been hammered out. Ways and Means Chairman Millard Fillmore got to work. The result of his committee’s effort was the “Little Tariff,” which extended the duties in effect on June 1 to August 1. That meant June 30 could pass without a fall in rates to 20 percent; the date on which the rates would fall was now August 1 instead of July 1. The measure also provided for the suspension of the distribution of the land-sale proceeds for one month—that is, until August 1. On June 26 Congress sent the stopgap measure to the president.29
With this bill, the Whigs had thrown down the gauntlet. On March 25 the president had made explicit his opposition to continuing distribution if tariff rates remained higher than 20 percent, maintaining that he would honor the Land Act passed in September 1841. It was not likely he would view the temporary suspension of distribution as an acceptable compromise because the Whigs intended to resume the practice after August 1. At least one Whig in the House believed Tyler meant what he said and should probably not be tested. “I believe with truth,” James Irvin of Pennsylvania declared, “that he will not approve a revenue and tariff bill that distributes the Land fund.” The result, Irvin feared, “will prevent anything from being done . . . that will afford relief to the country.”30
Senator Mangum of North Carolina expressed his confidence that the bill would receive the president’s signature. “I doubt, whether Tyler would dare to Veto,” he averred, “yet the extremist rashness often accompany the highest degree of feebleness & imbecility.” Mangum had just been elected president pro tempore of the Senate (making him next in the line of succession to the presidency if something should happen to Tyler), which, Clay laughed, “must have given particular satisfaction at the White House.” His new position of leadership, however, did not bestow on the North Carolinian any greater understanding of the president.31
What, then, accounts for Mangum’s confidence that another veto was not in the offing? The answer lay with the Compromise Tariff itself. According to the most commonly accepted interpretation of that law—the one to which Treasury Secretary Forward and most Whigs subscribed—no duties could even be legally collected after June 30 if tariff rates remained above 20 percent and there was not a new law on the books. President Tyler thus faced a potentially knotty problem. He had gone on record acknowledging that shrinking the deficit required tariff rates higher than 20 percent. The “Little Tariff” bill maintained those higher rates. But again Tyler insisted he would support no bill that retained distribution at the same time as the higher tariff duties. Would he really place the Treasury at greater risk by vetoing a bill that would allow the collection of much-needed tariff revenue just so he could abide by his principles? The Whigs had put him into a tight spot, which, Upshur reported, “afforded much disquiet to the President and cabinet.”32
Attorney General Legaré provided Tyler with a solution. He insisted that the prevailing interpretation of the Compromise Tariff was wrong—duties could indeed be collected after June 30 without passage of a new law. Here he explicitly disagreed with Treasury Secretary Forward and, in effect, overruled him. Furthermore, the president could bypass Congress and suspend distribution on his own if tariff rates remained above 20 percent. It was a clever reading of the law.33
With this legal cover, Tyler sent his veto message to the House of Representatives on June 29, 1842. The basis for his rejection of the “Little Tariff” bill was its violation of the principles of the Compromise Tariff of 1833 and its abrogation of the Land Act of 1841. There were no constitutional issues at stake as there had been with the bank bills of the special session. Tyler simply believed it better—given the condition of the Treasury—that both laws remain in force. He again argued that a new tariff law providing for higher duties than 20 percent was needed to restore the credit of the United States and allow the federal government to function. He reiterated his support for the incidental protection of American industry and maintained that, instead of being paid to the states, the proceeds from the sale of public lands would be put to better use by reducing the deficit. In short, the veto message restated the very same arguments the president had made to both houses on March 25. Tyler also expressed his “entire willingness to cooperate in all financial measures, constitutional and proper,” that Congress may pass to alleviate the country’s financial predicament. He would still work with lawmakers if possible.34
Furious Whigs—who should not have been surprised by this latest veto—charged the president with “executive dictation.” They did not have the votes to override and were not appeased by Tyler’s appeal for them to work together to relieve the poor state of the Treasury. They asserted that his “villainous caprice” had supplanted the legislative authority of Congress. Tyler scoffed at the notion. “The Constitution never designed that the executive should be a mere cipher,” he wrote to a group of supporters in Philadelphia, knowing they would publish his letter. “On the contrary, it denies to Congress the right to pass any law without his approval, thereby imparting to it, for wise purposes, an active agency in all legislation.” Tyler believed these latest charges were the result of policy differences between the White House and Congress and that the Whigs were angry because they could not force him to heel. They were outraged, he pointed out, because he had upheld a law—the Land Bill—they had passed during the special session. He was right. And the Whigs were beginning to look ridiculous.35
Whigs were also angry with Tyler at the end of June for another bill he had actually signed into law. After receiving the final population figures from the 1840 census, Congress passed an apportionment bill that adjusted the ratio of the number of people per representative in the House to 70,680 and reduced the total size of that body. The bill further mandated that each state form districts for the purpose of electing members of Congress. Tyler signed the measure but attached a “special message”—what would later be called a presidential “signing statement”—that made clear he had reservations about the new law. As an advocate of states’ rights, Tyler expressed his unease with the districting component of the bill, but because he entertained only “doubts” and was not certain of its unconstitutionality, he yielded to the will of Congress. Nevertheless, he wanted his reservations “left on record.” John Quincy Adams led the outcry against what the Whigs believed was another example of executive malfeasance by calling the special message an “amphibious production” that violated the separation of powers. Left out of the discussion was the way in which the apportionment bill threatened the political power of the South in national politics. Ultimately, Virginia lost three seats in the House, Kentucky three, North Carolina four, and Tennessee two.36
The controversy over the apportionment bill, however, was but a mere sideshow to the fight over the tariff and distribution. Whig leaders realized that as much as they had tried to place the president into a tight spot with the “Little Tariff” bill, he had now turned the tables on them. They had linked the higher tariff with distribution not just because the two measures were favored components of the party’s economic program but because passage of both might not result from separate bills. Many southern and western Whigs who favored distribution opposed a higher tariff. Many northern and eastern congressmen who represented manufacturers wanted higher tariff rates but did not enthusiastically support distribution. Neither bloc in Congress could be counted on beyond doubt to maintain strict party loyalty and vote for both. Tyler’s bank vetoes had nurtured party cohesion among the orthodox members of the party and ensured cross-sectional party discipline, but this latest veto called the overall Whig strategy into question. “Shall we pass the Tariff, giving up the lands, or adjourn & let all go together?” John J. Crittenden asked Clay. It was a good question.37
Clay most emphatically did not want the party to abandon distribution for the sake of securing higher tariff rates. He wanted both and continued to send letters to Whigs such as Crittenden and Mangum demanding that they stay the course. Clay argued that Tyler’s latest veto would continue to aid the party: the president was now even more closely linked to the Democrats, and they to him. This was an idea that gained traction in Washington. “The impression is very strong here,” one Whig reported, “that there has been an actual bargain & coalition between Tyler and the leading democrats in Congress. And they are now to support warmly & cordially his administration & election.”38
Clay had succeeded in getting the members of his party to accept this notion. But he did not stop there. The Kentuckian was also intrigued by an idea first raised by Virginia congressman and vocal Tyler hater John Minor Botts shortly after the president’s latest veto. On July 11 Botts took to the floor of the House to call for Tyler’s impeachment. When Clay seemed a bit too eager to encourage Botts, Crittenden warned him that pursuing impeachment might very well backfire on the Whigs and damage Clay’s presidential prospects. The former senator reluctantly concurred but believed the president would eventually face impeachment anyway. The Whigs would continue to insist on distribution, and Tyler would use the veto again—of this he had no doubt.39
The veto of the “Little Tariff” bill had raised the stakes for the Whigs and created an even more poisonous atmosphere in Washington than what had hung like a smoky haze over the special session. Clay was enthusiastic about impeachment because he had personally introduced the resolutions in the Senate calling for constitutional amendments to curtail the ability of the president to use the veto. He earnestly believed—in accordance with Whig doctrine—that the executive held too much power. He was also driven, of course, by personal reasons. Tyler had vetoed two bills that would have created his precious bank. Now, what Clay called the “pranks of a monkey” not only endangered his beloved distribution but also threatened to sharpen differences within the Whig ranks that he so desperately needed to paper over if the party was to trumpet any legislative success from the Twenty-Seventh Congress. Though he never explicitly used this term, in reading his correspondence, one gets the distinct impression that Clay believed he could just not let the president “win” the battle for supremacy in the federal government. To him, it was a zero-sum game. What is also clear is that his retirement from the Senate meant nothing because he was still directing the members of his party from Kentucky. This still was very much Henry Clay’s fight with John Tyler.40
For his part, the president was angry that one of the “madcaps”—Botts (he could no longer even refer to him by name)—sought his impeachment. “Did you ever expect to see your old friend under trial for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’?” he asked Williamsburg neighbor Robert McCandlish by letter. “The high crime of sustaining the Constitution of the country I have committed, and to this I plead guilty,” he wrote with bitterness. “The high crime of arresting the lavish donation of a source of revenue, at the moment the Treasury is bankrupt, of that also I am guilty; and the high crime of daring to have an opinion of my own, Congress to the contrary notwithstanding, I plead guilty also to that.”41
Tyler had become the first president to face any kind of formal impeachment action. To place this development into its proper historical perspective, consider the following: John Adams had signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law in 1798, and though he faced vilification in the ranks of the emergent Democratic-Republican Party for violating the First Amendment, no formal attempt at impeachment had been made. James Madison had waged an unpopular war with the British beginning in 1812, but the opposition Federalists had not moved to impeach him. Andrew Jackson had ordered the removal of the national bank’s deposits—for which he faced censure. None of these chief executives were threatened with impeachment. But now John Tyler had been?
He could not quite believe how all of this had transpired. “Did you ever expect that the State-rights men of the Whig party were to surrender all their long cherished opinions at the dictation of the National Republicans?” he asked his friend McCandlish. “Did you expect that Clay would have led off the attack on his own Compromise bill of 1833, and his Distribution act of 1841? And yet, because I will not go with him, I am abused, in Congress and out, as man never was before—assailed as a traitor, and threatened with impeachment.”
In contrast to his state of mind during the special session, however—when the stress of the bank fight took its toll and he lost the confidence he had shown when he assumed the presidency—in the summer of 1842, Tyler let his anger breed defiance. “But let it pass,” he wrote of the impeachment talk. “Other attempts are to be made to head me, and we shall see how they will succeed. J. Q. Adams leads off a new attack shortly, in what, I suppose, will be a denial to the President of the right to give a reason for what he does,—a privilege which J.Q.A. would readily extend to any free negro in New England.”
This defiance, to which he added a bit of self-righteousness, did not mean Tyler remained completely immune from the turmoil swirling around his administration. “Politics,” he admitted, “have me in their grip.” The “miserable squabbles” with Congress had made his life unpleasant, which he found all the more bothersome because of the daily drudgery of his job. As he related to McCandlish:
My course of life is to rise with the sun, and to work from that time until three o’clock. The order of dispatching business pretty much is, first, all diplomatic matters; second, all matters connected with the action of Congress; third, matters of general concern falling under the executive control; then the reception of visitors, and dispatch of private petitions. I dine at three-and-a-half o’clock, and in the evening my employments are miscellaneous—directions to Secretaries and endorsement of numerous papers. I take some short time for exercise, and after candle-light again receive visitors, apart from all business, until ten at night, when I retire to bed. Such is the life led by an American President.
“What say you?” Tyler asked his friend. “Would you exchange the peace and quiet of your homestead for such an office?”42
The hot and humid month of August 1842 was anything but “peace and quiet” in Washington. On August 6 Congress sent Tyler another bill that linked the tariff with distribution. This measure, optimistically called the Permanent Tariff Bill, called for raising import duties well above 20 percent and continuing distribution unabated. Whigs knew Tyler would veto this one as well. The majority of them welcomed this outcome, convinced, as Clay was, that more vetoes meant political doom for the president and more support for their party from the American people.43
Although Webster urged Tyler to hold his nose, swallow his pride, and sign this latest measure, he refused. The president duly sent another veto message to the House on August 9. One observer noted that the Whigs, who still could not override the veto, were now “cross and crabbed” and appeared determined “to let the Government get along as it best can without any further action from them.” The party was “now perfectly reckless,” and many rank-and-file Whigs “seem[ed] to care not a straw what may be the consequences of their action, provided they can embarrass President Tyler.” The Democrat John C. Calhoun again neatly summed up the situation. “The Whigs are now divided into two parties,” he wrote, “one preferring the Distribution to the Tariff, and the other the Tariff to Distribution; and neither willing to join in a bill simply for revenue with us.” Another Democrat, expressing more glee than the dour Calhoun had, exclaimed that the Whigs had “put themselves so clearly in the wrong that instead of ‘heading the Captain,’ they are, themselves, headed!”44
But the Whigs made one final attempt to head “Captain Tyler” before Congress adjourned, and it was an ugly display of spite. Instead of formally receiving the veto message, entering its details into their journal, and reconsidering the bill as the Constitution requires, the House leadership referred it to a select committee of thirteen, which would pronounce judgment on the president. This was unprecedented in the history of the United States. John Quincy Adams, who had made the motion to form the committee, was named its chairman. As Tyler had earlier predicted, Adams set out to satisfy a vendetta.
Henry Wise, Caleb Cushing, and George Proffit loudly protested upon the introduction of the motion to form the committee. They, along with newly emergent Tyler supporter William Cost Johnson of Maryland, engaged in what Adams referred to as “bullying and chicanery” for three hours in an effort to quash the motion. They failed. But their stance probably chastened Adams, for at the first meeting of the committee, he informed its members that he would not draft articles of impeachment. When John Minor Botts—a committee member—sought to introduce a resolution in the House asserting a vote of “no confidence” in the president, Adams killed it. This select committee was designed merely to embarrass John Tyler.45
Nine of the thirteen committee members signed the resulting majority report, which highlighted two public letters Tyler had sent to Philadelphia supporters (one quoted above ) as well as his veto messages and offered a scathing indictment of his entire presidency up to that point. Adams resurrected the old charge that an “acting president” did not have the same authority as one who had been elected to the office; after sixteen months, these bitter Whigs still could not acknowledge that Tyler was duly sworn in and had taken the oath of office. In addition, Adams pushed for a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to override a president’s veto by a majority of both houses rather than a two-thirds vote, giving new life to Clay’s Senate resolution from months before.
It was not the finest hour for Old Man Eloquent (Adams). He had, in the estimation of one Washington insider, “shown more temper, obstinacy, & bad feeling than any other man in the House, & it seems to me as if, in his ungovernable passion, he would rather see his Country sunk into a mobocracy than that any Tariff should pass.” The Democratic Review scolded: “Like bad punch, Mr. Adams’s report was at once very hot and very weak. It was a document of the meanest partisan attack and abuse against the President.”46
Tyler agreed. He was furious at what transpired in the House. In his latest veto message, he had asked Congress to reconsider its effort to link the tariff and distribution, virtually pleading with the Whigs to send him a clean tariff bill, one that he could sign. Adams and his committee, however, had had more pressing matters on which they wanted to focus. The House voted 100 to 80 to accept the majority report and its incendiary content, despite the efforts of Charles J. Ingersoll of Pennsylvania—a somewhat surprising supporter of Tyler in this instance—and James I. Roosevelt of New York, who submitted a minority report, and Thomas Walker Gilmer of Virginia, who submitted a counterreport. Both of these documents supported the president’s course of action. The resolution to amend the Constitution to take away presidential power failed 99 to 90, a bit too close.47
Tyler took no comfort in the outcome of that vote. He lodged a formal written protest against the House committee, denouncing it as “ex parte and extrajudicial.” In doing so he followed a precedent set by President Jackson, who in April 1834 delivered a blistering protest to the Senate, which had voted to censure him for removing the deposits from the national bank. Tyler fulminated that Adams’s committee had “assailed my whole official conduct without the shadow of a pretext for such an assault, and, stopping short of impeachment, has charged me, nevertheless, with offenses declared to deserve impeachment.” Moreover, the report lacked “any particle of testimony to support the charges it contains.”
The president argued that he was being subjected to the indignity of this committee’s report merely because he had dared to exercise the constitutional authority of the executive branch. He would not shrink from his duties as president unless the Constitution was amended to require him to do so. Furthermore, Tyler complained that he had been “made to feel too sensibly the difficulties of my unprecedented position not to know all that is intended to be conveyed in the reproach cast upon a President without a party.” He concluded his protest by “respectfully” asking that it be “entered upon the Journal of the House of Representatives as a solemn and formal declaration for all time to come against the injustice and unconstitutionality of such a proceeding.” The House refused to do so—on a motion by Botts. The Democratic Review, which had taken Adams to task for issuing the report, now chastised Tyler for “very fairly [bringing] down the laugh upon his own head.” The matter had become farcical.48
Congress had wasted a lot of time. Finally, its members heeded Tyler’s warnings. Two separate bills were passed for him to sign—one that would raise tariff rates, and one that would allow distribution to continue after rates rose beyond 20 percent. He signed the Tariff Act of 1842 into law on August 30 and used the pocket veto on the distribution measure. Congress adjourned on August 31. Tyler had gotten what he wanted for the country—after eight long months. By the following summer, the higher tariff led to a sharp increase in government revenue that eliminated the federal deficit. Of course, Tyler received none of the credit among Whigs in Congress or in the party’s newspapers.49
On Saturday, August 20, President Tyler and his entire cabinet went to the Washington arsenal. Once they arrived, they boarded a steamboat on the Potomac River and fanned out against the railing of one of the decks. The purpose of their visit was to witness a spectacular demonstration by Samuel Colt. The inventor of the multishot pistol was part of a group that had developed a submarine battery—an underwater mine—that could be detonated from as far as five miles away to blow up enemy ships as they entered or exited a harbor. Colt was hoping to persuade the government to invest in the weapon for the nation’s harbor defenses and wanted to impress Navy Secretary Upshur, members of Congress, and the president. Operating from nearby Alexandria and signaled by a twenty-four-gun salute, Colt blew up a vessel—an old clam boat—and sent a “column of smoke, water and fragments . . . several hundred feet in the air.” Tyler and what one witness described as “half the city” gasped at the destruction. They were suitably impressed.50
Congress appropriated $15,000 for Colt to continue his experiments with the submarine battery, despite the efforts of John Quincy Adams, who believed blowing up ships constituted “not fair and honest warfare.” Aided by Samuel F. B. Morse’s experiments with copper wire, Colt modified the electrical system upon which his invention depended and offered another demonstration for the president in the spring of 1844. This time he needed to fire his mine three times before only a portion of the ship exploded. Ultimately, the House Committee on Naval Affairs did not recommend adoption of the submarine battery.51
Nevertheless, Colt’s demonstration in August 1842 was a fitting metaphor for what the Whig Party had done during the second session of the Twenty-Seventh Congress. They had blown up the session and almost completely wasted the summer of 1842 with their insistence that President Tyler accept both a higher tariff and the continued distribution of the proceeds from the sale of the public lands. As historian Michael Holt points out, “Whig efforts to enact a distinctive legislative program . . . proved as abortive as in the special session.” While it was true that the Whigs had secured a higher tariff, which pleased northern and eastern constituents, they had alienated many of their southern and western supporters by failing to win passage of a distribution bill. Consequently, states did not receive funds they desperately needed to pay their own debts. Moreover, the Whigs won passage of the tariff only because Democrats in manufacturing states like Pennsylvania had voted with them. Thus they could not take full credit for the measure with the voters.
The party was now in disarray and split more than it ever had been. The factionalism cost Whigs dearly in the state elections held during the summer and fall of 1842, as they lost seats in Congress, in governor’s mansions, and in statehouses throughout the country. Democrats would soon win control of the House of Representatives. “A succession of disastrous defeats in the State elections has been the consequence” of efforts to get the better of President Tyler, an Arkansas Whig noted ruefully. “Whether we can recover from this tremendous paralysis by 1844 is questionable.”52
But Tyler also fared badly. He found himself further weakened politically as the Whigs made their break with him complete and further painted him as a Democrat. They tried to isolate him by tying him more closely to the so-called Corporal’s Guard, especially Wise, who was becoming ever more unpopular in Congress. Tyler was “a fool guided by the counsels of a maniac,” one House member sputtered. Wise was “like a rattle snake or viper in the fall season, when they become blind by the effects of their own poison—he strikes at everything, and I believe would be happy could he destroy the Govt.”53 For their part, the Democrats were not eager to embrace the renegade president who had spurned their standard years earlier. Tyler was now caught in the middle. His failure to win support for the Exchequer plan also weakened him because it proved that appealing to moderate Whigs and Democrats in order to build a coalition willing to support him in 1844 was going to be more difficult than he had imagined—perhaps impossible.
Within the larger historical context, by the end of the second session of the Twenty-Seventh Congress, Tyler had placed a definite stamp on his presidency, one that has often been overlooked by historians. Like Jackson, he expanded the scope of presidential power, with the veto becoming the means by which he exercised that authority. During his term in office, Tyler vetoed ten bills, including four by pocket veto. This total placed him second to Jackson, who had vetoed twelve. Tyler’s rank would last until Andrew Johnson, who vetoed a total of twenty-nine bills. From that point on, presidents resorted to the veto much more regularly.54
Like Jackson, Tyler believed legislative overreach required the executive to act to prevent unconstitutional or unwise laws from being foisted on the American people. Old Hickory, however, had always claimed that the president was the direct representative of the people and that his actions—including the veto—were calculated to protect them from threats to their liberty the other branches of government may have posed. Jackson adapted his uniquely republican ideology to the age of universal (white) manhood suffrage and greater political participation; in fact, he had helped build the Democratic Party on it. He was forward looking. Tyler, on the other hand, believed the Constitution sometimes had to be protected against what he had referred to during the special session as “a mere representative majority.” For him, the potential tyranny of the majority required—demanded—strict allegiance to the oath of office and the promise to uphold and defend the Constitution. So, while he did invoke “the people” at times to defend his course of action, his view of the presidency and presidential prerogative differed from Jackson’s. Tyler’s understanding of his role was more reactionary than the Old Hero’s had been. But both men found the same result politically. Tyler had been sharply critical of President Jackson for abusing his authority, subverting the Constitution, and expanding the scope of presidential power. He had joined the Whig Party to oppose him. Now the Whigs harried him—Tyler—with the same charges of executive usurpation they once leveled at Jackson. The irony could not have been lost on the president without a party.55