Chapter 15

A TYLER PARTY?

 

 

Monday, September 12, 1842, in the words of one Washington resident, was the “hottest day of this season.” Within the last week, a sweltering late-summer heat wave had enveloped the capital. Rain was nowhere to be found. The soaring mercury had made merely walking the dusty streets all but unbearable. Congress had adjourned on August 31, and most of the politicians had fled for their home states a short time later, seeking respite from both the weather and the acrid partisanship that had characterized this session as it had the last.1

Ordinarily, a hot spell would not have troubled President Tyler. The climate of his native Tidewater Virginia, after all, was similar to Washington’s, especially in the summer. But September 12 was not an ordinary day. In fact, it was likely the most painful day of Tyler’s life up to that point. September 12 was the day of Letitia Tyler’s funeral.

Letitia had passed away quietly at 8:00 P.M. on the previous Saturday, September 10, the first presidential spouse to die while her husband held the office. She was fifty-two years old. Letitia and John Tyler had been married for twenty-nine years. The next morning, Sunday, church bells tolled throughout Washington earlier and longer than usual as worshipers made their way to services. Clergymen informed their congregations of the melancholy news of the First Lady’s death once everyone had been seated. The Tyler family made funeral arrangements, and the president decided that Letitia’s remains would lie in state in the East Room of the White House. In the past year and a half, the East Room had been the site of President Harrison’s funeral, Lizzy Tyler’s wedding, the levee for Charles Dickens and Washington Irving, and now yet another funeral. At four o’clock on Monday afternoon, Reverend Hawley officiated over an Episcopal ceremony before the members of Congress who had remained in the city and the cabinet officials who were able to attend. The next day the entire Tyler family boarded a train to accompany Letitia’s remains to Cedar Grove, her family’s estate in New Kent County, Virginia, where she would be laid to rest.2

Letitia’s death sparked an outpouring of admiration from all quarters, more out of respect, it would seem, than anything else, since very few people in Washington had actually met her. The Washington Globe as well as the Madisonian offered glowing tributes, as did many papers throughout the country. The Washington Daily National Intelligencer’s obituary praised her as “loving and confiding to her husband, gentle and affectionate to her children, kind and charitable to the needy and afflicted.”3 This last encomium was recognition of the efforts Letitia had taken in Virginia as a much-younger woman to improve the lives of those less fortunate.

More formal condolences arrived at the White House in the days after Letitia’s death. For example, the chaplain of the US Senate, Septimus Tustin, wrote to the president, “How gladly would I bind up your lacerated feelings, and pour the balm of healing into your wounded spirit.” Reverend Tustin was also certain that his letter “[gave] utterance to the feelings of the entire Clergy of this City.” Indeed, black bunting adorned many of the churches and other buildings in the capital, much as it had done in the wake of President Harrison’s death, the event that had, of course, brought Letitia to Washington in the first place back in April 1841.4

We can only imagine what Tyler thought of these condolences or how they affected him because he apparently did not share his feelings about his wife’s death through letters. Perhaps his silence was a sign of his deep attachment to Letitia, the abiding love he felt for her, and the respect he accorded to her memory. He may have been so grief stricken that he could not bear to vent his feelings for fear they would overwhelm him and force a loss of his composure. What seems more likely is that Tyler employed the stoicism and fatalism commonly exhibited by people of his time to help him navigate his sorrow. His reaction to the loss of another family member years later may provide evidence that he did exactly that. In 1849 a cholera epidemic swept across the United States. The disease killed thousands, including Robert and Priscilla’s son, two-year-old Thomas Cooper Tyler—John Tyler’s grandson. In consoling Robert on his loss, Tyler wrote that “the decree of Providence cannot be altered” and encouraged him to submit “to an overruling destiny.” He wanted Robert to consider the possibility that “what appears a grievous burthen hard to be borne is in truth a blessing” that would make the loss easier to bear. “Cheer up then my son, and placing all your trust and confidence in the Superior Being yield neither to unavailing melancholy or grief.” It is not hard to imagine that Tyler had taken this advice himself when he lost Letitia. Never a man given to overtly public displays of his faith, he nevertheless indicated that a belief in God sustained him, especially in difficult times.5

Little Thomas’s passing occurred suddenly and with scant warning and was therefore a shock to the family. Tyler had had a long time to prepare himself mentally for Letitia’s death. He must have also felt some sense of relief that her suffering was finally over. Nevertheless, he was self-aware enough to realize that he needed time away—alone and without any family around—to grieve and recover from the blow. He had decided weeks before Letitia’s death that he would escape Washington and seek refuge at the Virginia shore once Congress adjourned. Now that trip seemed more necessary than ever. Soon after the funeral at Cedar Grove, he traveled to the Rip Raps, a presidential retreat at Old Point Comfort, Virginia. Andrew Jackson was the first president to make it a vacation hideaway, and it became rather like a smaller, nineteenth-century version of Camp David. Tyler used it for the first time that September.6

While settling in at the Rip Raps, the president wrote a short letter to Jackson. He had received a note from the Old Hero in August and now had the time to reply. Apologizing for having taken so long to write, and alluding to the loss of Jackson’s beloved Rachel many years ago, Tyler wrote that he had “repaired to this place for the double purpose of repose and seclusion.” He expressed his appreciation for the former president’s support of his course of action during the second session of the Twenty-Seventh Congress. Tyler also made clear to Jackson that he would welcome any advice on political matters he might offer in the future.7

This was a curious turn of events. Jackson’s custom over the course of a long public career had been to write off most enemies forever. He never forgot a slight and seemingly never forgave any man who crossed him. Tyler had left the Democratic Party because he believed Jackson had abused his authority as president during the nullification crisis and violated his oath of office during the bank war. By all accounts, and based on how he treated other Democrats who had done as Tyler had, the Virginian had become an apostate. Jackson had softened toward Tyler, though, and had expressed sympathy for him as he stared down the Whigs in the showdown over the bank in the special session. He had also allowed the Washington Globe to publish letters he had written in support of Tyler and congratulated him for maintaining the principles he had espoused for so long, despite the torrent of abuse heaped on him by the Clay Whigs. Their shared opposition to the bank (and Clay) and the kinship the two men shared in the presidency drew them together. Many years earlier Jackson had reached a rapprochement with Thomas Hart Benton, with whom he had once fought a duel and who soon became one of his staunchest supporters in the Senate. Evidently, Jackson was now doing the same with Tyler.8

That explanation accounts for Jackson’s good feelings. But what explains Tyler’s solicitude toward Jackson? Surely, it would have been rude not to reply to Jackson’s letter. Perhaps Tyler was merely showing a former occupant of the White House the proper respect he felt he deserved. Again, the shared experience of occupying the presidency is often a strong bond and has very famously brought former political opponents together in a unique solidarity.9 Or perhaps he was trying to cultivate a relationship with the man many still saw as the head of the Democratic Party. Having Jackson in his corner might buttress Tyler against any looming battles with the Whigs. He might also be able to parlay that support into his drive to succeed himself in 1844. This is not to say that the sentiments Tyler now expressed toward Jackson were anything less than sincere, but it also had to have dawned on him that cordial relations between the two men might help further his political career.

That being said, Tyler was not altogether hopeful about finding a place once again in the Democratic ranks. Indeed, he thought that the party might no longer be amenable to him or he to it. “From portions of the Democratic party,” he wrote at one point, “I have received an apparently warm support: but while the ultras control in the name of party, I fear that no good would arise from either an amalgamation with them, or a too ready assent to their demands for office.” Tyler also opposed Martin Van Buren, who still held a sizeable portion of the power within the party.10

The Whigs had been saying for some time that Tyler had thrown himself upon the altar of the Democracy and had shown his desire to court the Democrats with his vetoes. These charges were understandable, but overall the Whig rhetoric did not match the reality. The president’s course of action thus far had obviously pleased many Democrats. Yet they were apparently in no mood to welcome him back into the fold. Francis P. Blair’s Washington Globe, the party’s most influential newspaper, reminded voters of Tyler’s political opportunism years ago. “Mr. Tyler,” an editorial pointed out, “at the moment the fortunes of the Democracy were struggling with an accumulation of difficulties, separated himself from that party, and became, to a certain extent, the instrument of its overthrow.” Now, having “quarreled with his new friends,” he “wishes to come back to his old; or rather to stand where he is while they come to him. It also appears that he does not expect to be merely tolerated as a repentant sinner, but that the Democratic party shall reward him for his desertion by rallying under his banner, and placing him at the head.” The Globe would not hear of it. “This, we think, is rather asking too much.”11

Tyler may have feared this was true and realized he had come to a crossroads. Should he ally himself fully and publicly with the Democrats? Should he try to build support among states’ rights Whigs? Should he attempt to create a third party, and if so, what would the composition of that party be? He was unsure. The only thing he did feel certain of was his conviction that he should continue to look out for the best interests of the American people and uphold his administration on sound principles. “Is there any other course for me to pursue than to look to the public good irrespective of either faction?” he asked Littleton Tazewell, to whom he turned once again for counsel. Tyler conceded to his friend, however, that “the difficulty in the way of administering the government without a party is undoubtedly great.” Something had to give.12

 

 

Tyler characteristically made no decision at the Rip Raps about what course of action he would pursue; he set no plans in motion. The president returned to Washington late in the fall of 1842 with his political future still very much in doubt. Fortunately, he could take solace in the fact that the lame-duck session of the Twenty-Seventh Congress would have a different feel to it than the two that preceded it due to the Whigs having lost control of the House of Representatives in the 1842 midterm elections; the party retained control of the Senate but had lost seats. Election returns at the state level told a similar story as Democrats made sizeable gains and won control of several legislatures. In Tyler’s home state of Virginia, for example, Democrats could gleefully proclaim that “Whiggery is capsized.”13

Senator Clay’s aggressiveness during the special session, and the continued battering of the president the Whig Party employed during the second session, had presented voters with a stark choice: they could either signal their approval of Clay and ratify the party’s course, which had resulted in little economic recovery, or they could repudiate the Whigs for playing politics and trying to destroy a president and seek redress by putting the Democrats back in power. The electorate had apparently rendered its verdict. The voters seemingly made no distinction between “Clay Whigs” or “Tyler Whigs”—they wanted them gone.

Historian Michael Holt has shown convincingly, however, that low turnout of their partisans in the 1842 midterms, not a spike in the vote totals of the Democrats, doomed the Whigs at the state and national levels. The same had been true of the off-year elections of 1841. One Democrat in Virginia noted some “apathy amongst the Whigs” in his state, and Clay argued that most of the elections were “lost not by the increased strength of their opponents, but by voters remaining absent from feelings of mortification and disgust, created by the acting President.” The Kentuckian overstated his case by solely blaming Tyler for the reversal of the Whig Party’s electoral fortunes—his ego certainly did not allow him to acknowledge his own role in demoralizing the partisan ranks and depressing turnout—but he had correctly assessed the primary cause of the party’s defeats nationwide. But all was not lost. Clay also found “great confidence prevailing among the Whigs of their success in 1844.” He now expected to be the nominee of the party—and the beneficiary of that success. The ever-elusive presidency seemed to be within his grasp.14

President Tyler also looked to the 1844 campaign, and he drew a very different lesson from the recent elections than his enemy did. Tyler declared later that the results of the midterms represented the “greatest political victory ever won within my recollection.” In terms of the amount of turnover and the percentage of seats that had changed parties, he was absolutely correct. His analysis for the massive electoral shift, however, reflected wishful thinking. Tyler maintained that Democratic success had been “achieved entirely upon the vetoes of the Bank bills presented to me at the extra session.” The president believed the voters had sided with him in the fight with the Clay Whigs, and he was pleased with the results. Particularly pleasing was the defeat of his arch-nemesis John Minor Botts. Unfortunately, Tyler also found out that most of his own supporters in the House of Representatives—the men Clay so derisively referred to as the Corporal’s Guard—would not return for the Twenty-Eighth Congress. Indeed, George Proffit, Francis Mallory, W. W. Irwin, Caleb Cushing, and James I. Roosevelt had all declined to stand for reelection because they realized they had no chance to win. Only Henry Wise and Thomas Walker Gilmer remained. Wise would be reelected from a different district in Virginia as a “Tyler Democrat” in 1843. Gilmer ran for reelection in 1842 as a Democrat.15

 

 

The combination of nationwide Whig losses in the midterms, the loss of his supporters in Congress, and the criticism directed toward his administration from newspapers heralding the candidacies of Van Buren and Clay prompted Tyler to finally make up his mind about what course of action he would pursue for 1844. He wrote later that what had transpired in the fall of 1842 convinced him that “it was esteemed every way proper to organize a separate party.” His nearly year-long effort to find middle ground between the “ultras” of both major parties and steer a moderate course had clearly failed. He could not use this strategy to build a party. He needed to try something new.16

It would be an uphill battle, and Tyler never indicated that he believed it would be anything but a longshot. Previous third-party efforts in American politics had failed to gain traction nationally. Thus, on one level Tyler’s decision to pursue the third-party option must be viewed as an act of desperation. On the other hand, it might also be viewed as the defiant act of a president who was unwilling to allow his enemies to dictate his political future.

Tyler’s motives for creating this separate party have been the subject of debate and disagreement on the part of historians. Some—most notably Tyler biographer Robert Seager—contend that he sought to build a third party only to shape the agenda of the 1844 presidential campaign and force the Democratic Party to pay heed to the issues he cared about most. This view maintains that by the fall of 1842, Tyler had decided to pursue the annexation of Texas and wanted to make sure the Democrats made support for annexation part of their platform. By gathering a sizeable number of his own supporters nationwide in a separate party, Tyler could release them at the appropriate time, when they would campaign, vote, and ensure a Democratic victory. In sum, this meant that Tyler realized he stood no chance of winning the presidency in his own right but wanted to play the role of kingmaker. Knowing the Democratic Party favored expansion and aware that the Whigs would likely come out publicly against the annexation of Texas, Tyler could then have his final revenge on Clay by preventing him from capturing the White House.17

There is some plausibility in this interpretation—the “kingmaker” view—but it rests upon two assumptions. First, for it to ring true, Tyler had to have committed fully to the annexation of Texas by November 1842. Certainly, as we have seen, he was at least thinking about the prospect of annexation one year earlier, as his letter to Webster in October 1841 makes clear. But as we have also seen, “thinking about” something for Tyler did not usually translate into firm action until much time had elapsed. The evidence indicates more convincingly that at the time he made known his intention to create a third party, his final decision on whether to pursue annexation had not yet been made. Second, the kingmaker view assumes that Tyler was petty enough to want to play the lead role in thwarting Clay’s presidential ambitions in 1844. This was certainly not out of the question, as the tension and bitterness of the special session had created hard feelings all around. There is no way to know for sure if this motivated Tyler because he never came right out and said—or wrote—anything to that effect. What does seem more likely, given how his presidency had evolved since the special session and in light of his often-overweening ambition, is that Tyler believed the ultimate revenge on Clay would come with winning election in his own right. And in November 1842, Tyler could still convince himself into thinking this might be a real possibility.

The most compelling evidence for the kingmaker view is a letter Tyler wrote in July 1846, sixteen months after he left the White House, describing his role in the election of 1844. He wrote that he had organized a third party “ostensibly in reference to the presidency in my own person, but in truth for the sole purpose of controlling events, by throwing in the weight of that organization for the public good, in the then approaching election.” Tyler maintained that it was with “this purpose, and with this view, and in order to preserve such organization until the proper time should arrive for striking a decisive blow” that he formed his own party.18

Historians such as Seager who subscribe to the kingmaker view seem to have accepted this letter at face value and apparently have fastened onto the phrase “ostensibly in reference to the presidency in my own person” to show that Tyler did not actually make an effort to build a third party so that he could win election in his own right. The implication of the 1846 letter is that people at the time assumed he wanted to use a third party to win the presidency in 1844 but that this perception of his motives was wrong, and he needed to correct the record.

This 1846 letter is self-serving. Having failed in his efforts to create a viable-enough party for him to capture the presidency in 1844, Tyler seemed to have engaged in a bit of revisionist history after he left office. He claimed after the fact that his party was designed only to advance the public good, shape the agenda of the 1844 campaign, and sweep the Democratic nominee into the White House—that it had been created “for the sole purpose of controlling events,” as he put it. He had supposedly come to the conclusion after the debacle of the special session of the Twenty-Seventh Congress and his break with the Whig Party that no realistic chance ever existed for him to succeed himself. Declaring that he had never entertained the thought of winning election in his own right and had not been motivated by that thought in his efforts to create a third party allowed Tyler to save face.

Compelling evidence indicates, however, that at least for a while he very much intended his third party to serve as a vehicle to get himself elected president in 1844. The kingmaker view does not seem to have been adopted by any of Tyler’s contemporaries. Most politicians assumed he was pursuing the presidency in his own right and that his party—quixotic and unrealistic as it may have been—was designed for that purpose. Daniel Webster certainly adopted this view, and his proximity to the president and the fact that he enjoyed at least some of his confidence would have made him especially attuned to his plans. In March 1843 Webster dispatched a letter marked “Strictly private and confidential” to Nicholas Biddle and instructed him to “burn it” after reading it (an instruction Biddle thankfully ignored). “I may as well tell you, in the strictest confidence,” Webster wrote, “the whole truth, respecting the state of things here. The President is still resolved to try the chances of an Election.” Tyler’s goal of winning the presidency in his own right “enters into every thing.” Webster betrayed no small amount of dismay at this situation because Tyler was even “quite disposed to throw himself altogether into the arms of the loco foco party” in order to accomplish his goal. “He will be disappointed,” Webster later confided to Edward Everett. “They will certainly cheat him. But he cannot be convinced of this truth.” All of this “will lead,” he acknowledged, “to movements in which I cannot concur.” Though he did not specifically mention the annexation of Texas, the secretary of state no doubt had that particular policy in mind. “But I am expecting, every day, measures, which I cannot stand by, & face the Country,” he wrote. As a result, Webster acknowledged that he was preparing to leave the cabinet. The only question would be when.

What most troubled Webster was the way the president had resolved to use the patronage power to build a third party. “He has altogether too high an opinion of the work which can be wrought by giving offices to hungry applicants,” Webster complained. “And he is surrounded by these, from morning to night. Every appointment, therefore, from the highest to the lowest, raises a question of political affects [sic].” Webster believed some of the appointments the president had made to offices in the State Department were unworthy of their new station, and he feared “the interest of the Country, & the dignity of the Govt. may both suffer from it.”19

Tyler had indeed begun to use the patronage to his advantage. He initiated the process in earnest during the spring of 1842, when he ordered the collector at the Philadelphia custom house, Jonathan Roberts, to fire some thirty Clay partisans and replace them with Tylerites. When Roberts refused, Tyler fired him. Early in his presidency, Tyler had appointed many Clay men to government positions as a way of demonstrating good faith to the Whig Party. All of that had changed; the president now sought to give the spoils of office to Democrats or men fully on record as being friendly to him and his administration. “No man suspected of preferring Clay can get an office from him,” one congressman reported, “indeed no man who is recommended by a friend of Clay [can get an office].”20

Tyler made no apologies for employing the patronage power. This placed him in an interesting position. He had railed against President Jackson’s use of the “spoils system” while he served in the Senate. More recently, in his inaugural address he had pointed out that a “selfishly ambitious” chief executive might use his “unrestrained power” to appoint and remove federal officeholders “in order either to perpetuate his authority or hand it over to some favorite as his successor.” The use of power in this way made the “will” of the president “absolute and supreme” on patronage matters. Most Whigs held Tyler to account for these words, and they reacted angrily to his aggressive use of the patronage power. “Corruption and Tyler, and Tyler and Corruption, will stick together as long as Cataline and treason,” one party member spat. “The name of Tyler will stink in the nostrils of the people; for the history of our Government affords no such palpable example of the prostitution of the executive patronage to the wicked purpose of bribery.”21

The Whigs forgot, or simply ignored, what else Tyler had said about patronage in his inaugural address. He had warned them that “numerous removals [of federal officeholders] may become necessary” during his term in office if the men who occupied these positions “had been guilty of an active partisanship or by secret means” sought to give “official influence to the purpose of party.”22 What seemed evident in the fall of 1842 is that Tyler had hedged his bets early in his presidency when it came to patronage. He played the part of a good Whig by decrying the baleful effects of the spoils system on the nation’s politics. But he had rhetorically given himself enough room so that when he began removing loyal Whigs from federal jobs en masse, he could not be completely tarred with the charge of inconsistency or roundly criticized for having gone against what he had previously said. He had been prescient enough to realize that at some point he might occupy the very situation he now found himself in and knew he would need some means by which to advance his own cause.

Consequently, Tyler embarked on what some Whig newspapers referred to as the “reign of terror,” from late 1842 through much of 1843, systematically purging his enemies from the ranks of federal officeholders. He was especially ruthless in wielding the patronage axe in the nation’s largest cities, obviously recognizing that the juiciest plums to be had were found either in towns with major ports, in heavily concentrated urban areas, or in those that were both. Tyler removed the collector of the Port of New York, Edward Curtis, and summarily sacked some sixty of his minions. In Boston Tyler used Cushing as an intermediary to grease the skids with newspaper editors and other politicians, most of whom were little more than hacks looking for patronage handouts to alleviate their straitened financial circumstances. The result of this political bloodbath was that any supporters of Tyler now left the Whig Party once and for all. Whigs might have regarded that as good news, but they realized too that the wholesale removal of their own from federal jobs weakened them at all levels of government—national, state, and local—and undermined their efforts to mobilize voters and organize effective opposition to the Democrats.

The tide had turned against the Whigs, Clay’s optimism about the party’s prospects in 1844 notwithstanding: Tyler’s vetoes prevented most of the party’s economic agenda from becoming law; the Democratic takeover of many state legislatures in the 1842 midterms meant that, with the recent passage of the reapportionment bill, Democrats could gerrymander congressional districts to benefit their party and deprive the Whigs of many seats in the House of Representatives; and now the federal patronage was slipping away. The party faithful were in a state of shock. The victory of 1840 was but a distant memory. Many Whigs even believed there was actually little use in electing their men to office. Some argued, in the wake of the Democratic takeover of the House, that perhaps it was better for them in the long run if they lost the majority in the Senate, too, so they would not be blamed for the bad economy. Tyler’s presidency had indeed wrought havoc on the Whigs—and on the Second Party System itself. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.23

Tyler relied on Attorney General Legaré and Secretary of War Spencer for guidance as he reshaped the federal offices. In fact, he ordered Spencer to take the lead in both targeting Whig jobholders for removal and finding suitable replacements. “I am entirely willing to do in regards to the change in office holders whatever you may recommend,” Tyler wrote to his war secretary. “We have numberless enemies in office and they should forthwith be made to quit.” He made some of his own suggestions for several posts, mercilessly writing that a replacement should be found for one man, “then off with his head. Nor,” he went on to assert, “do I care if a like service be done to the Postmaster at Portland.” Tyler also sought a clerkship for a “poor O’Bryan,” whom he described as “actually starving.” Generally, though, the president deferred to Spencer and told him, “unless I have conclusive reasons to the contrary will carry out your recommendations.” Tyler declared, “action is what we want, prompt and decisive action, but what I say is that we ought to know whom we appoint.”24

This last directive proved problematic. Because of the rapidity with which the purges were carried out, Tyler and Spencer could not possibly have known or had firsthand knowledge of every single individual who might appear eligible for a patronage position. Turning out Whig loyalists was the easy part; replacing them could be exasperating. Tyler received letters from friends and political allies from around the country who recommended their favorites, including one from Dolley Madison, who sought a consular position in Liverpool for her son John Payne Todd (Tyler declined to appoint him), but many of the positions he filled went to individuals he knew very little about. Mistakes were unavoidable, and some men of questionable loyalty to the president, questionable competence, or both became the beneficiaries of administration largesse. Tyler found this out the hard way in Rhode Island. “We committed a fatal blunder in turning out Littlefield and putting in a Dorrite,” he wrote Spencer at one point. Clearly, building a third party through patronage was not going to be easy. The “reign of terror” also provided Congressman Botts with ammunition to bolster his effort to impeach Tyler.25

 

 

Tyler recognized that patronage alone would not suffice. If he was going to win the presidency in 1844, he needed to construct an organization with leadership nationwide that could mobilize the grassroots. To start, he commissioned a man named Alexander Abell to write a campaign biography. Abell finished the book late in 1843 and released it to coincide with the campaign season. Next, Tyler sought to gather the support of Democrats in the North who opposed the presumptive nominee of the party in 1844, Martin Van Buren. These “Conservative” Democrats—called “Hunkers” in Van Buren’s home state of New York—composed a sizeable portion of the party. Finally, Tyler looked to solidify his standing among the states’ rights men of both parties in the South. His third-party movement thus took on the character of a hybrid. Tyler sought to co-opt elements of both parties, with Democrats as the most important component. He started in New York, where he believed he enjoyed a following throughout the state and in New York City. Two things nurtured that belief. First, Alexander Hamilton Jr., a friend of the administration, informed him in the spring of 1842 that Democrats in Congress “exhibit[ed] serious alarm at the progress of our course among the people” in New York City. Hamilton wrote that Tyler’s position there was “beautiful,” though he also advised the president to force Webster and Spencer out of his cabinet. Second, Tyler supported the Democratic candidate for New York governor in 1842, William C. Bouck, who sought to deny Seward another term. Bouck prevailed, and Tyler interpreted his victory as evidence that his endorsement had made the crucial difference.26

Efforts to mobilize support in New York City actually predated Tyler’s “reign of terror” over the federal patronage and serve as further evidence that he sought a term in his own right in 1844. Recognizing that a viable third party would need a base in the nation’s largest city, the president approved Robert Tyler’s attempt to buy a stake in James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald in June 1841. That attempt failed. So, too, did an effort to secure the loyalty of another city paper, the Standard. By July 1842, however, it seemed the nascent Tyler party had found its mouthpiece in New York City: the Union, a paper principally owned by smalltime political operative Paul R. George and edited by a lawyer and former diplomat in the Madison administration named Mordecai Manuel Noah. The fifty-seven-year-old Noah, a prominent figure in New York’s Jewish community and a member of the Democratic Party organization known as Tammany Hall, also served as chairman of the Tyler General Committee in New York City, which formed late in the spring of 1842.27

At one point, Noah served as an operative for Tyler. Mulling over his outsider candidacy and exhibiting his tendency to waffle, the president dispatched Noah to Richmond in January 1843 to visit Thomas Ritchie and ascertain what leading Democrats in Virginia and throughout the South thought of Tyler’s chances to become a viable candidate of their party in 1844. The crusty old editor and most of his cronies were committed to Van Buren, while others favored Calhoun. Ritchie still respected Tyler, but like many in the Democratic Party, he could not support the man who had left their ranks to join the Whigs.28

On his way back to New York, Noah called on Tyler at the White House. The two men talked at great length about his meeting with Ritchie, then about the political landscape in New York City and what level of support existed for the president throughout the Empire State. During the course of their conversation, Noah bluntly told Tyler that he did not think a third party could be built, at least not one that could get him elected president. “This you cannot do,” he said. “You possess patronage, to be sure; and you can use it, without violating any principle; but if it were ten times as extensive as it is it would not enable you to create a party of sufficient consequence to justify you in accepting a nomination even if you could obtain one.” At some point in the discussion—the evidence is unclear whether it occurred before Noah’s statement against a third party or after—Tyler claimed that he “entertained no hopes of an election himself” but merely hoped his party would be able to influence the Democratic Party’s agenda for the 1844 presidential campaign.29

What was going on here? As Webster’s private and confidential letter to Biddle two months later makes clear, on some level Tyler still entertained the hope that he could be elected in his own right after his interview with Noah—that is, after he told Noah he did not actually intend to use his third party in an effort to win the presidency in 1844. What appears most plausible in reading the evidence detailing the Tyler-Noah meeting is that the president told his visitor he did not seek election in his own right after Noah had taken pains to show him why a third party was not feasible. Tyler seemingly confirmed Noah’s view of the situation and denied his actual intentions because he did not wish to defend himself to someone who was obviously not a true believer. He could not abandon his own belief in his candidacy even in the face of Noah’s more realistic assessment of his chances.

Tyler’s thought process on the 1844 campaign and on a third party reflected the vacillation that drove his friends to distraction and his enemies to ridicule. One moment he seemed determined to build a personal party and pursue his own election. The next moment he thought the more modest goal of influencing the Democratic Party in the 1844 campaign seemed more feasible. Then he wanted to test the waters and find out if the Democrats would seriously consider nominating him for president. His mind was all over the map. He also never clearly defined what he stood for. Tyler spoke often of upholding the Constitution and of administering the government on “sound principles,” but these were little more than vague platitudes. He lacked focus. And his conception of a party clearly bore no resemblance to the strictly states’ rights variety for which Beverley Tucker and Abel Upshur had for so long hoped.

The president had had an opportunity to attach something substantive to his candidacy and trumpet his middle-ground solution to the fiscal crisis—the Exchequer plan—but despite his private enthusiasm for the proposal, he never fought for it publicly with any kind of conviction. Tyler never took it to the American people and offered it as an idea worthy of support. His support of it in his annual message was too timid; perhaps he did not really believe in it. The policy proposal that would eventually set him apart from the other candidates for president in 1844—Texas annexation—had to be played close to the vest until he was fully ready to present it. In short, Tyler never displayed the will necessary to convince voters that he even deserved to win election in his own right. He did finally come to the conclusion that he stood no chance, but exactly when that realization occurred is difficult to pinpoint.

Tyler’s susceptibility to flattery—a character trait his enemies pilloried by publicly calling him the “tool” of a “venal pack of officeholders”—made coming to that realization even more difficult. Democrats who sought patronage often told him what he wanted to hear and found a receptive audience. “There are in this district a great number of voters who are Tyler men,” cooed one party hack, who wrote to the president with the aspirations of becoming postmaster at Salem, Massachusetts. “The Administration is growing stronger and stronger here, and it is not uncommon to hear leading Democrats declare, as I heard one yesterday, ‘well I believe John Tyler will be the next President in spite of everything.’” With words like these jumping off the page, it is little wonder why Tyler continued to believe in the possibility of his election.30

Events in New York City should have given him pause. Early in 1843 the movement to form a third party appeared increasingly unsettled. Most troubling was a rift in the Tyler General Committee. The postmaster of New York City, John Lorimer Graham, a Tyler appointee, and the city’s marshal, Silas M. Stillwell, launched an anti-Semitic attack against Noah. They wrote letters to the president arguing that Noah’s Jewish religion had put off potential supporters and that his belief in a Tyler candidacy was lukewarm at best. Tyler already knew Noah’s enthusiasm for his third party had flagged—their meeting in January had made that clear. Graham and Stillwell forced Noah to resign as editor of the Union late in January 1843, apparently persuading him to leave by hinting that they would use their influence with the president to see that he was named surveyor of the Port of New York or US consul to Constantinople. He ultimately received neither position.

Noah blamed Graham and Robert Tyler for his ouster and for his subsequent failure to receive a patronage appointment from the president. He believed the two men had poisoned Tyler against him and had used his religion as ammunition to force him out. Through his newspaper contacts in New York City, Robert undoubtedly became aware of the Tylerites’ increasing displeasure with Noah and no doubt counseled his father that he needed to go. There is no evidence, however, that either Robert or the president personally opposed Noah due to his religious orientation. Rather, it seems plain that the decision to force his resignation as editor of the Union was solely a political calculation, one based on what the leaders of the Tyler movement in New York City had been telling them would be best for the president’s candidacy. It was the anti-Semitism of New York voters, then, that prompted Noah’s removal. His face-to-face meeting with Tyler at the White House, however, and the strong argument he made then against using patronage to build a third party had also made him expendable. Finally, the poor circulation figures of the Union and the dearth of subscriptions to the rag sealed Noah’s fate.31

But the problems with Tyler’s bid for a third party extended well beyond the newspapers. Very little headway had been made to mobilize the grassroots. In fact, little enthusiasm existed at all for a pro-Tyler party. Turnout at meetings organized during the winter of 1843 to rally the faithful often fell far short of the hoped-for numbers. Noah, who, despite his ouster from the Union inexplicably remained head of the Tyler General Committee until March, organized a meeting at New York’s Broadway Tabernacle that month and invited Cushing, Wise, and Proffit to give speeches trumpeting the virtues of the president; Cushing was the only one who accepted the invitation. A raucous gathering filled the spacious venue to capacity. Unfortunately, as one newspaper reported, “though the concourse of people was so great, it was abundantly evident that a very small proportion of them attended the meeting as Tyler men.” Noah and the officers of the meeting made preliminary remarks “amidst every conceivable variety of noise and slight disturbances which most readily suggest themselves to people who fancy themselves undergoing the operation of being unreasonably bored.” After Cushing spoke, partisans of Clay and Van Buren led cheers that drowned out the Tyler supporters. And this was the best of the few Tyler meetings held throughout the city.32

With paltry support from the grassroots, Tyler continued his purge of federal officeholders. But he soon ran into another problem: the Senate often refused to confirm the men he had nominated to replace the Whig partisans. Clay supporters and Van Buren Democrats there worked together in an unlikely alliance to stymie the president’s attempt to reshape the patronage and build a third party. The Senate clearly pursued a vendetta against Tyler and at one point discussed the removals in open debate on the floor in an effort to embarrass him. Whig leaders demanded that the president provide reasons for sacking their loyalists. Tyler ignored them. He found the Senate’s ongoing unwillingness to confirm his appointments most frustrating when it came time to reshuffle his cabinet. When the hapless Walter Forward resigned as Treasury secretary on March 1, 1843, Tyler found senators unwilling to accept his nomination of Cushing as the replacement. As a member of Tyler’s Corporal’s Guard, Cushing had a target on his back, and the president should not have expected his confirmation. As the lame-duck session of the Twenty-Seventh Congress came to an end, the Senate rejected the nomination by a vote of 27 to 19. Stubbornly, Tyler resubmitted Cushing’s name two hours later. The Senate again voted him down, this time 27 to 10. Incredibly, Tyler sent Cushing’s name to the Senate a third time on the same day! The final vote rejecting the would-be secretary of the Treasury carried at 29 to 2. Tyler then had to scramble and nominate John C. Spencer for the post; the Senate confirmed Spencer by 1 vote. As consolation to Cushing, who had by now become a friend, Tyler eventually appointed him as head of a US mission to China.33

Tyler also encountered resistance to his nominations to the US Supreme Court. Justice Smith Thompson died in December 1843. Tyler nominated Spencer, a man most acknowledged was qualified to wear the robes of the nation’s highest court. The Senate rejected him, with Clay supporters providing the decisive votes. Tyler then nominated another New Yorker, Reuben H. Walworth. Before the Senate could take up his nomination, Justice Henry Baldwin died in April 1844. Tyler sought to nominate James Buchanan for Baldwin’s seat, but Buchanan declined the offer. Tyler then nominated Edward King. The Senate postponed confirmation votes on both Walworth and King until after the presidential election of 1844. Tyler withdrew both nominations and instead submitted Samuel Nelson, chief justice of New York, calculating that if he could secure the confirmation of a man whom he knew enjoyed bipartisan support, he would have momentum to fill the second vacancy. The Senate did indeed confirm Nelson with very little opposition. Tyler then attempted to fill the remaining opening with John Meredith Read. In a final act of spite, the Senate adjourned before Read received a hearing. The choice of filling this seat would eventually be left to Tyler’s successor, James K. Polk. In sum, Tyler was the least successful of all US presidents in winning confirmation of his Supreme Court nominees.34

 

 

This entire spectacle—the purges and the widespread failure to secure Senate confirmation for his nominees—attested to a presidency in crisis and highlighted the difficulty Tyler faced in trying to govern without a party. The near impossibility of using patronage to build a third party was also laid bare. As one scholar has observed, “Tyler’s troubles not only damaged his administration but also proved that political party support is required to ensure nomination” of men he wanted to hold federal offices.35 Thus, Tyler’s status as a president without a party subjected him to a cruel calculus: the patronage process represented perhaps the only way to construct the foundation of a third-party effort, but because he lacked the ballast of partisan support, he could not hope to secure the nominations he needed from the Senate to make patronage work to his advantage. An effort to create a third party, then, was doomed to fail. The strength and vitality of the two-party system of Whigs and Democrats in the early 1840s meant that Tyler never stood a realistic chance of succeeding himself. He had not wanted to admit that early in his presidency, but he certainly came to this realization at some point.

One piece of circumstantial evidence that argues for late summer of 1843 as the transition point when Tyler gave up trying to win election in his own right and dedicated his efforts solely to influencing the 1844 presidential race was the resignation of Daniel Webster as secretary of state. Webster informed the president that he would leave the cabinet on May 8. The New Englander had been contemplating his departure for many months but until this time had not seemed eager to make up his mind to resign. What may have finally pushed him out was Tyler’s commitment to pursue the annexation of Texas. Webster had repeatedly told the president he could not be a party to such a policy and had tried to softly dissuade him from making it a focal point of his administration’s agenda. Tyler was still hesitating but was now closer to dedicating the remainder of his term to accomplishing what he had told Webster in October 1841 would add “luster” to his presidency.

The two men parted company as friends and assured each other of their mutual respect. Webster told the president that there was “no one who more sincerely or ardently desires the prosperity, success, and honor of your administration.”36 Shortly, he would feel compelled to warn Tyler that this honor was in jeopardy. Troubled by the continuation of the purges and disturbed by the president’s apparent desire to woo Democrats by rewarding them with as many patronage plums as possible, Webster wrote a long letter to Tyler in August 1843 in which he spelled out his misgivings. He emphatically told him that his actions had placed his “substantial and permanent fame as President . . . in no small peril.”37

Tyler apparently took the warning to heart. Less than one week after receiving Webster’s letter, he wrote to Spencer and informed him that the reign of terror would be halted. “In fact we have done enough and should pause,” he said. “This I am pretty much resolved upon.”38

Did this change in tactics indicate Tyler had come to the realization he could not build a third party that would allow him to win election in his own right? Perhaps. Patronage appointments would resume in time but would lack the fierce urgency and vindictiveness of the purges that had lasted for well over a year. From this point on, Tyler would exercise more selectivity, using the patronage power more strategically and with a specific purpose in mind, namely to advance the cause of Texas annexation.

Whether he abandoned the thought of third-party glory or not in September 1843, Tyler always seemed to return to the idea that perhaps he could carry the Democratic flag in the presidential campaign a year later. He thought the party might turn to him if the Van Buren and Calhoun factions destroyed each other or if another candidate—Lewis Cass, for example—foundered and they could find no other man to hoist the party’s banner. “It is legitimate to argue that I am more available than Mr. V. B. or Mr. C[ass],” Tyler boasted in a “strictly confidential” letter to the editor of a supportive paper in Boston, “and to prove, what the sequel will demonstrate, that the one you advocate is the only person the Democrats can elect.” The president now wanted to portray himself as a Democrat who stood above the internecine warfare of faction.39

It was a fanciful notion and does not reflect well on Tyler. He could talk sensibly one moment, as he had to Tazewell in October 1842, and seem to accept the political reality of his situation. At other moments he seemed unwilling or unable to come to terms with the predicament he found himself in as a president without a party. Tyler also never seemed to fully grasp that his divorce from the Democratic standard was irreconcilable, as Blair had made clear in the pages of the Washington Globe. One should be careful, however, not to judge Tyler too harshly for this or to ascribe his behavior to a defect of character. After all, most first-term presidents are usually given the chance to face reelection and appeal to the people for a second term. Every president up to that time—excepting Harrison, of course—had been afforded that opportunity. Tyler eventually came to the realization that he would have no such prospect. When that realization came, it must have been a bitter pill to swallow, for his whole life had been devoted to accomplishment, to fulfilling ambitions, and to faithfully serving his country. He recognized that his time in public life was approaching its end, whether he liked it or not.