7
The Captain’s Bride
Tyler’s furtive negotiations with the Texans did not remain secret. On April 27, 1844, five days after its submission to the Senate, Ohio senator Benjamin Tappan, an antislavery Democrat, gave the New York Evening Post his copy of the treaty and its accompanying documents, and the news quickly spread throughout the country. A short time later, the Senate voted to rebuke executive secrecy by making public its own deliberations on the treaty. Tyler’s hope that the Senate would swiftly ratify the treaty was dead and, with it, the treaty itself.1
The records contained a number of bombshells—hints of Duff Green’s efforts to scare America into annexing Texas before the British did; the security guarantees given to Texas at the risk of war with Mexico; and, most important, a letter from Secretary of State John C. Calhoun to Britain’s minister to the United States, Richard Pakenham, which cast the Texas debate in a most disturbing light. In the so-called Pakenham Letter, Calhoun accused the British of encouraging Texas to end slavery and insisted that the South’s “peculiar institution” was, in fact, “a political institution, essential to the peace, safety, and prosperity” of the region. Never happier than when he was philosophizing on behalf of slavery, Calhoun argued that science had indisputably shown that Southern slaves suffered from fewer debilitating diseases—“deafness, blindness, insanity, and idiocy”—than free blacks and that they had “improved greatly in every respect, in number, comfort, intelligence and morals.” The Pakenham Letter proved the claims of antiannexationists and abolitionists that the Texas question was only about slavery—its expansion and preservation—despite Tyler’s protestations to the contrary.2
Public disclosure of the treaty had a major impact in this election year. To Philip Hone, it was the sole issue “which regulates all our politics, the pivot on which party spirit moves, and the stepping stone from which Presidential candidates rise, or on which they stumble to rise no more.” The Senate’s deliberations revealed “a scene of executive usurpation which ought to subject the chief to impeachment, and such of his advisors as remain … to disgraceful dismissal from their offices … . Clay must beat them all.” Henry Clay was more than ready to fight. Assured of the Whig Party nomination, Clay announced on April 27 that he opposed the treaty. “Annexation and war with Mexico are identical,” he proclaimed. Instead, he called for “union, peace, and patience.” Martin Van Buren, who wished to return to office, faced a more difficult dilemma: the Democratic Party’s traditional North-South alliance was fragmenting. Democrats in the West and South were enthusiastic annexationists, while New Yorkers and others in the Northeast were not. Van Buren tried to straddle the issue by opposing the treaty but agreeing to accept Texas annexation if it did not mean war with Mexico, did not exacerbate sectional tensions, and had the clear support of the whole nation.3
Tyler, all hope of success nearly gone, had only one option left—to launch his own party and attempt to act as a spoiler in the November presidential contest. Democrats who endorsed annexation would support him, and though a small contingent, they could prove decisive in a close election. On May 27, 1844, Tyler’s so-called Democratic-Republican Party, the name a tribute to his beloved Jefferson, held its first (and last) presidential convention, just down the street from the Democratic Party’s meeting in Baltimore. The festivities borrowed liberally from Harrison’s hard cider campaign of 1840. The delegates—“federal workers with a day off,” noted John Seigenthaler—consumed “large supplies of brandy and water and whiskey and gin” while excitedly waving banners reading “Tyler and Texas.” Some conventioneers wanted to wait to see if the Democrats nominated someone more to their liking than Tyler, but the majority wanted to act quickly. “Did you not come here to nominate John Tyler?” responded an Ohio supporter. “Why then wait for the action of any other body? We will not wait; we will not allow any other body to steal our thunder, nor permit any other man to steal our pick-axe. They shall not take our vetoes, neither shall they appropriate Texas to their own party uses.” Tyler was nominated one hour after the opening gavel was struck; he did not select a running mate.4
The Democrats were having a more difficult time choosing their nominee. Despite his front-runner status, Van Buren was blocked from the nomination because he could not garner two-thirds of the party vote. Not until the ninth ballot did the Democrats unite behind James K. Polk, the first “dark horse” presidential candidate. Tyler approved their choice. A slave owner from Tennessee, Polk was a former Speaker of the House and an expansionist. The Democratic Party platform called for “the re-occupation of Oregon and the re-annexation of Texas at the earliest practicable period.”
If Tyler stayed in the race, he threatened to draw enough votes from Polk to elect Clay, which handed Tyler an opportunity to secure his legacy. Formally accepting his party’s nomination on May 30, he called for the ratification of the treaty and hinted that he might end his candidacy if Texas were allowed to join the Union. “The question with me is between Texas and the presidency,” he said. “The latter, even if within my grasp, would not for a moment be permitted to stand in the way of the first. The Democrats … are now looking to me for help,” he wrote his daughter Mary on June 4. “I can either continue the contest or abandon it with honor.” He would hold off a decision until Polk gave him assurances that he would annex Texas and retain some of Tyler’s people in office. The accidental president, the man without a party, remained important.5
The party conventions hardened partisan opinions. In the Senate, the combatants fought for almost a month before voting on the treaty on June 8, 1844. Every Whig, except one lone Mississippian, and eight of the Democrats (seven from the North and one Westerner, Thomas Hart Benton) voted thirty-five to sixteen to defeat the treaty. “Mr. Tyler’s infamous treaty … has received its quietus in the Senate,” exulted Hone, while John Quincy Adams called the decisive tally a “deliverance” from “All mighty God. May it prove not a mere temporary deliverance.”6
Adams’s prayers were not answered. On June 10, Tyler sent the treaty and its records to the House of Representatives, informing its members that while he preferred to follow the traditional treaty-making practice, he invited Congress to consider alternative means to achieve Texas annexation. However, the House adjourned before taking action.7
 
 
Texas and the presidency were not Tyler’s only preoccupations. On June 24, the Washington Madisonian announced that the president was leaving town for a brief “repose” from his “arduous duties.” Late that night, Tyler, his son John Jr., and two political associates arrived by train in New York City and quietly took rooms at the Howard Hotel. D. D. Howard, the hotel’s owner, ordered his employees not to talk about the president’s presence and prohibited them from leaving the premises that night. The solution to the mystery was known only to a few—John Tyler was getting married.8
It is impossible to know when Julia Gardiner finally decided to become Tyler’s wife, but there seems little doubt that her father’s tragic death influenced her view of the president. “After I lost my father,” she wrote, “[h]e seemed to fill the place and to be more agreeable in every way than any younger man ever was or could be.” In late April, Tyler had asked Juliana Gardiner for permission to wed her daughter and promised to “advance her happiness by all and every means in my power.” Juliana agreed, but not enthusiastically. Despite Tyler’s “high political position, and unsullied private character,” she was still concerned that he would not be able to provide Julia “with all the necessary comforts and elegancies of life.”9
They married at two o’clock on Wednesday, June 26, at Manhattan’s Church of the Ascension. The Episcopal service was brief, and since the Gardiner family was still in mourning, only Julia’s immediate family attended. The Tyler party consisted only of son John Jr. and a few close friends. After the ceremony, the bride and groom lunched at the Gardiner apartment, then boarded a ferry for a trip around the harbor. Among the warships that saluted them was the USS Princeton. That afternoon, they boarded a train for Philadelphia, where they spent their wedding night, and arrived in Washington the next day. “Wherever we stopped, wherever we went, crowds of people outstripping one another, came to gaze at the President’s bride,” Julia wrote her mother. “The secrecy of the affair is on the tongue and admiration of everyone. Everyone says it was the best managed thing they ever heard of. The President says I am the best of diplomatists.” A few days later, they set out for Charles City County, Virginia, where they honeymooned at Tyler’s new plantation, which he had named Sherwood Forest in honor of Robin Hood, a fellow political outlaw.10
The marriage of a sitting president was another first in American history, and the Tyler wedding drew a great deal of attention. New Yorkers were especially surprised by the news. Alexander Gardiner wrote his sister: “At the corners of streets, in the public places and in every drawing room, it is the engrossing theme.” Philip Hone naturally had an opinion: Tyler was “an old fool,” he wrote in his diary, who “flew on the wings of love … to the arms of his expectant bride … . The illustrious bridegroom is said to be fifty-five years of age and looks ten years older, and the bride is a dashing girl of twenty-two [sic].” Another Whig, George Templeton Strong, was equally caustic: “Infatuated old John Tyler was married today to one of those large fleshy Miss Gardiners … poor unfortunate deluded old jackass.”11
Newspapers, some respectful, some mocking, salivated over the event. The New York Herald could not resist comparing the union of Tyler and Gardiner with that of the United States and Texas. “Miss Gardiner is an honor to her sex, and goes decidedly for Tyler and annexation … . The President has concluded a treaty of immediate annexation, which will be ratified without the aid of the Senate,” the editors noted wryly. “Now, then, is the time to make a grand movement for Tyler’s re-election. Neither Polk nor Clay can bring to the White House such beauty, elegance, grace, and high accomplishments.” The Herald also took a swipe at the Madisonian’s announced reasons for the president’s absence: “We rather think that the President’s ‘arduous duties’ are only beginning. ‘Repose,’ indeed!”12
Reactions in Washington followed party lines. As expected, John Quincy Adams was horrified. “Captain Tyler and his bride are the laughingstock of the city,” he noted. “It seems as if he was racing for a prize-banner to the nuptials of the mock—heroic—the sublime and the ridiculous. He has assumed the war power as a prerogative, the veto power as a caprice, the appointing and dismissing power as a fund for bribery; and now, under circumstances of revolting indecency, is performing with a young girl from New York the old fable of January and May.” Tyler’s friends were somewhat bemused by the thirty years that separated the bride from the groom. When Tyler’s friend Henry Wise learned that Tyler planned to marry twenty-four-year-old Julia, he asked, “Have you really won her?”
“Yes,” Tyler replied, “and why should I not?”
“You are too far advanced in life to be imprudent in a love scrape,” insisted Wise.
“How imprudent?” demanded Tyler.
“Easily. You are not only past middle age, but you are President of the United States, and that is a dazzling dignity which may charm a damsel more than the man she marries.”
“Pooh!” exclaimed Tyler. “Why, my dear sir, I am just full in my prime!”13
Tyler’s family was not amused by the marriage. Although Tyler’s four daughters and three sons were aware of their father’s interest in Julia, only John Jr. knew about the wedding. In fact, it appears that Tyler intentionally kept them in the dark about the coming event. On June 4, three weeks before the ceremony, he wrote his eldest daughter, Mary, and noted that there was “nothing which would be of any interest to you.” Tyler’s daughter Elizabeth was four years younger than Julia and still missed her mother greatly; for the first three months after they married, she was unable to write to her stepmother, whom she addressed as “Mrs. Tyler.” The youngest, Alice, was seventeen; she too had difficulty adjusting to the new woman in her life. While Elizabeth and Alice eventually accepted Julia, Letitia, named for her mother, did not. The Tyler men—Robert, John, and Tazewell (only fourteen)—liked Julia instantly and welcomed her.14
“I have commenced my auspicious reign,” Julia wrote her mother after returning to Washington, “and am in quiet possession of the Presidential Mansion.” She found her domicile “a disgrace to the nation,” a profound disappointment compared to the family mansions on Gardiners Island and Lafayette Place. The building’s pillars were more a tobacco-stained brown than white, and the East Room’s chairs were torn and soiled, not fit even for “a brothel.” An earlier request for funds to refurbish the president’s home was rejected by Congress, so the First Lady asked her mother to contribute the needed cash. Juliana was happy to help. “You know how I detest a dirty house,” she told her daughter.15
Like all brides, she also found it difficult making the transition from honeymoon to normal domestic life, but living with the president of the United States presented special problems. According to Julia, Tyler told her that “the honeymoon is likely to last forever for he finds himself falling in love with me every day,” but he was too often preoccupied with less romantic affairs of state. Juliana reminded Julia of her husband’s responsibilities and offered advice: “Business should take the precedence of caressing—reserve your caressing for private leisure and be sure you let no one see it unless you wish to be laughed at.” Tyler for his part was slow in adjusting to a woman so different from his first wife, the quiet and reserved Letitia. For all her beauty and charm, Julia sometimes acted like “a spoilt child,” Tyler complained. But the period of adjustment ended, and the second Tyler marriage proved to be one of the happiest in presidential history.16
 
 
Their first summer together passed quickly. Julia oversaw the White House repairs while Tyler built up the Democratic-Republican Party. The more Tyler could challenge Polk’s chances, the more certain he was that Polk would deliver on his promise to annex Texas. He concentrated his chances on three states crucial to the Democrats—New York (where Julia’s brother Alexander Gardiner was put in charge), New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Tyler ruthlessly used patronage to build an organization loyal to “Tyler and Texas.” Tyler also believed he had support in Ohio and could carry Virginia for Polk. “Our course is now a plain one,” he told his son Robert. “Make these [Polk] men feel the great necessity of our cooperation.”17
His actions were enough to scare Polk into sending Mississippi senator Robert J. Walker, a pro-annexation conservative, to meet with the president. Tyler told Walker that he hoped Polk would win in November—and that he was willing to help. He claimed to have more than 150,000 dedicated supporters who, at his command, would support “Young Hickory,” as Polk’s fans were calling him. He asked in return that his allies be allowed to join the Democratic Party and be treated “as brethren and equals.” If Polk or his representative could give Tyler that guarantee, he promised to “withdraw” and support Polk enthusiastically. Walker was receptive. He reported to Polk that Tyler’s “cooperation cannot be overrated. In my judgment, it would be decisive in your favor.” Polk agreed.18
All that Polk needed was a mechanism that would allow Tyler to gracefully drop out of the race without reviving suspicions of a “corrupt bargain” like the one that haunted John Quincy Adams after his alliance with Henry Clay. Polk sent his law partner Gideon Jackson Pillow to the Hermitage to confer with former president Andrew Jackson, now ill but still determined to defeat the hated Clay. Jackson thought Tyler was asking too much for a man whose political support amounted “to a mere drop in the bucket,” but he recognized the dangers posed by a Tyler candidacy. As the grand old man of the Democratic Party, he offered to write letters assuring Tyler of everything he wanted. None would go directly to Tyler, however. Instead, Jackson wrote to John Y. Mason, Tyler’s secretary of the navy and an old friend of Polk’s, who was certain to share the correspondence with the president. In this way, the arrangement could be consummated without Polk’s or Tyler’s direct involvement.
On August 20, Tyler’s final campaign message was printed in the friendly Madisonian. It announced, “To My Friends Throughout the Union,” Tyler’s decision to leave the field and defended his record—vetoes and all—as president. He promoted his Texas treaty, emphasizing its national benefits, avoiding Calhoun’s emphasis on slavery, and denying that it would cause civil war. “The glory of my country, its safety and prosperity alike depend on Union,” he wrote, “and he who would contemplate its destruction, even for a moment, and form plans to accomplish it, deserves the deepest anathemas of the human race.” His only remaining ambition was “to add another bright star to the American constellation”; annexing Texas would be “an unfailing source of gratification to the end of my life.” Tyler’s supporters easily switched their allegiance to Polk, persuading him that a Polk administration would be “a continuation of my own, since he will be found the advocate of most of my measures.” And so Tyler became the first incumbent president to decline to seek a second term.19
Less than three months later, James K. Polk won the presidency, defeating Henry Clay by a little more than eight thousand votes out of 2.7 million cast. Polk won fifteen states to Clay’s eleven; the Whigs lost eight states that Harrison carried in 1840. Because so few votes separated winner from loser, everyone claimed credit for the Democrats’ success—the Southern annexationists, the Northern abolitionists, the recently (and often illegally) enfranchised Irish and Germans in New York and Pennsylvania, and last, but not least, the Tyler men. All or none may be correct, but New York was indisputably critical; Polk carried it by five thousand votes, many of them cast by the immigrants. The Whigs had been openly hostile toward these voters, as symbolized in Clay’s choice for his vice presidential running mate—Theodore Frelinghuysen, a Protestant reformer with anti-Catholic associations. In addition, Democrats had a rising star in New York gubernatorial candidate Silas Wright, who, despite his opposition to annexation, may have boosted Polk’s returns. Texas, it seems, had not influenced voters, but the Democrats—and Tyler—did not realize it, even if their opponents did. As one unhappy Whig later put it, “The election was decided … by the people of New York & Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maine [all won by Polk], on considerations and feelings, unconnected with any great national principles or interests.”20
Tyler interpreted Polk’s victory differently. Of the five states he targeted for special attention—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia—Polk won three, leading Tyler to believe that his case for annexing Texas and his withdrawal had been the decisive factors. He had beaten Henry Clay, the man who had tried but failed to destroy his presidency. “Hurrah for Polk!” Julia cried. “What will become of Henry Clay … . We shall have a very pleasant winter here I can now promise.” Her husband too was “happy as a clam at high water,” but gracious in victory. “Leave off abusing Mr. Clay altogether,” he told his supporters in the press. “He is dead and let him rest.”21
 
 
Although Tyler had less than four months left in the White House, he would not retire quietly. Indeed, because he interpreted Polk’s victory to mean there was a national mandate for annexation, he hoped to fulfill his last ambition before Polk’s inauguration. In his annual message to the lame-duck Congress on December 4, Tyler declared that “it is the will of both the people and the States that Texas shall be annexed to the Union promptly.” He asked the House and Senate to pass a joint resolution admitting Texas into the Union; only a simple majority in each chamber was required, and his signature. Once again, Tyler’s ambition and necessity trumped his earlier fervent constitutional ideology. This time, he had at his side an invaluable ally, “The Lovely Lady Presidentress.”
The title was the invention of F. W. Thomas, a New York Herald reporter, whom Julia had hired as a press agent. His chief responsibility was “to sound Julia’s praises far and near.” It was not a hard job. Washington had never quite seen anyone like Julia Gardiner Tyler. Besides being the youngest First Lady in history, she was also the most glamorous and extravagant. Thomas, possibly earning his pay by the word, called her “the most accomplished woman of her age … a spirit of youth and poetry and love, and tenderness, and riches, and celebrity, and modesty.”22
Julia’s mother should not have doubted the president’s ability to maintain her in the style to which she was accustomed; what Julia wanted, John gave her. He asked the American consul in Naples to select an Italian greyhound to accompany Julia on her daily stroll. She rode through Washington’s streets in a carriage pulled by a half dozen Arabian horses. Accused of having contracted a case of “queen fever” during her travels abroad, she installed herself as the White House’s social monarch. One reporter described a typical day: “[She] is attended … by twelve maids of honor … . Her serene loveliness received upon a raised platform wearing a headdress formed of bugles and resembling a crown.” She asked that the Marine Band play “Hail to the Chief” whenever her husband appeared at social and official events.23
Yet Julia Tyler was interested in more than lavish entertaining; she wanted to be involved in current affairs. Dolley Madison forbade the discussion of political issues at her White House parties (“politics is the business of men,” she said), but Julia encouraged it. While her guests danced the polka, a popular European import Julia had introduced to Washington society, she lobbied for Texas. She made certain that copies of the president’s December message were distributed throughout the capital. At one dinner, she wiled the public support of Supreme Court Associate Justice John McLean, her former suitor. It was “a matter of honor,” she told John C. Calhoun, seated next to her. “There is no honor in politics,” a sullen Calhoun replied. She smiled. “We will see.” Then Julia wrote down what she wanted McLean to say and passed the note to him. The justice read it, looked at Julia, and said, “for your sake,” then raised his glass to “Texas and John Tyler.” Tyler was happy to have McLean’s help but it “made the President as jealous as you please,” Julia’s sister Margaret noted.
Such nights were complemented by daily visits to Capitol Hill. “I will make as many friends as I can among the Senators,” Julia told her brother Alex. People soon sang of her efforts:

Texas was the Captain’s bride,
Till a lovelier one he took;
With Miss Gardiner by his side,
He, with scorn, on kings, may look.24

After debating the Texas issue for five weeks, the House approved 120 to 98 a resolution admitting Texas as a state on Saturday, January 25, 1845. Voting was along party lines, with the Democrats solidly supporting Polk’s position in favor of annexing Texas. “Rejoice with me,” Tyler exclaimed when he heard the news. “I entertain strong hopes that it will pass the Senate. A greater triumph was never achieved.”25
But Senate passage, as Philip Hone noted, was “now the great question.” Senators, protective of their treaty-making prerogatives, were especially concerned about acquiring foreign territory through a resolution when the Constitution clearly required them to ratify such arrangements. On February 4, the Foreign Relations Committee went on record opposing annexation by resolution. Deadlock was in the offing. “Politically all seems confusion,” observed Juliana Gardiner, who, like the entire Tyler-Gardiner clan, was following the developments closely. “One day no doubt of annexation; the next, all doubt.”26
In mid-February, President-elect Polk arrived in Washington and pressured the Senate to act. “He is for Texas, Texas, Texas,” noted one senator, “and talks of but little else.” The Whigs despaired. “Texas will be brought into the Union,” said Representative Washington Hunt. “There is no escape.” Polk’s intervention finally produced a compromise, offered by Mississippi senator Robert J. Walker, who would soon be Polk’s secretary of the Treasury, that allowed the president to either annex by resolution or reopen treaty negotiations with the Texans. It was a clever stratagem: a few Southern Whigs and Northern Democrats, originally opposed, voted for the final resolution, believing that Polk would choose negotiation and annexation would eventually fall through. Their votes allowed the resolution to pass, twenty-seven to twenty-five. The House approved the Senate version and everyone awaited Polk. Tyler, said South Carolina senator George McDuffie, “would not have the audacity to meddle with [the resolution].”27
 
 
Once again, Washington officialdom underestimated John Tyler. He had no wish to share the glory of Texas with the next president and, fearing that further delay would cause Texas to align itself with Britain or France, he signed the annexation resolution on March 1, three days before leaving office. He later explained his decision to the cabinet, which supported it unanimously, and sent Calhoun to inform Polk, who, while surprised, expressed no opinion. Those observing Tyler affix his signature wondered to whom he would give the coveted pen he had just used to bring Texas into the Union. Would it be Secretary of State John C. Calhoun? Senator Robert J. Walker, breaker of the Senate logjam? No. He gave the “immortal golden pen” to the Lady Presidentress, who wore it proudly around her neck that day and for many days thereafter.
Tyler’s bold action pleased the Texans but was not well received by others. John Quincy Adams growled that the Constitution had been made “a menstrous rag.” Many Whigs were bereft. “The Goths are in possession of the Capitol,” Philip Hone wrote, “and if the Union can stand the shock it will only be another evidence that Divine Providence takes better care of us than we deserve.” Also angry were those Democrats who were convinced that the final decision and credit belonged to Polk. “Thus quieted in their apprehensions,” said Thomas Hart Benton, “five Senators voted for the act of admission who would not otherwise have done so.”28
For the Tylers, the campaign for the annexation of Texas was a spectacular final achievement, and they spent their last weeks in the White House celebrating. “President Tyler will go out of the White House with drums beating and colors flying,” Julia’s publicist announced. In planning her last hurrah, Julia wanted “to do something in the way of entertaining that shall be the admiration and talk of the Washington world.” For her final official ball on February 18, she invited two thousand people, but another thousand showed up. “We were as thick as sheep in a pen,” Margaret complained, and when dinner was called there was “such a rush, crush, and smash to obtain entrance [as] was never seen before at a presidential entertainment.” Later, as the throng danced under “a flood of light” cast by the chandeliers’ thousand candles, the president, obviously delighted, remarked, “They cannot say now that I am a President without a party!”29
Late on the afternoon of March 3, the Tylers prepared to depart the White House for the last time. John Peter Van Ness, president of the Metropolitan Bank, stepped forward and delivered a brief “farewell address,” praising Tyler’s service and hoping that when current tempers cooled, he would receive “that justice and praise which he so richly deserved.” Then, the president “raised his hand” and began to speak, “his voice … more musical than ever,” Julia thought. “It rose and fell, and trembled and rose again.” He said:

In 1840 I was called from my farm to undertake the administration of public affairs, and I foresaw that I was called to a bed of thorns … . I rely on future history, and on the candid and impartial judgment of my fellow citizens, to award me the meed due to honest and conscientious purposes to serve my country.

He recalled the circumstances under which he had come to power, “almost alone between the two great parties which divide the country. A few noble-hearted and talented men rallied to my support … a corporal’s guard,” the group once ridiculed but now honored. He continued:

The day has come when a man can feel proud to be an American citizen. He can stand on the Northeastern boundary or on the shores of the Rio Grande del Norte and contemplate the extent of our vast and growing Republic, the boundaries of which have been settled and extended by peaceful negotiations … . The acquisition of Texas is a measure of the greatest importance. Our children’s children will live to realize the vast benefits conferred on our country by the union of Texas with this Republic.

Applause greeted the accidental president and his greatest achievement. “The effect was irresistible,” Julia noted, “and the deep admiration and respect it elicited was told truly in the sobs and exclamations all around. As they shook us by the hand when we entered our carriage they could not utter farewell.”
The day was historic in another way: as he left office, Congress overrode Tyler’s last presidential veto. It was on a minor bill authorizing the construction of two vessels for the Revenue Cutter Service, but Congress had never before been able to amass enough votes to do it. Tyler’s unprecedented presidency ended as it began.30