6

The Luster

George Ticknor was worried. The scholar and former Harvard professor was reading articles in the press claiming that the Tyler administration was secretly arranging to bring Texas into the Union. If true, Ticknor feared it would lead to war with Mexico and so exacerbate sectional tensions that America itself might be torn apart. In mid-March 1844, he ran into an old friend on Boston’s State Street, former secretary of state Daniel Webster, who had finally left Tyler’s increasingly un-Whig-like government in May 1843. After a convivial meeting, Ticknor became serious, asking Webster if what he had read about Tyler and Texas was true. Webster tightly gripped Ticknor’s arm and said, “in a low tone but with great emphasis, ‘That is not a matter to be talked about in the street; come to me this evening at Mr. Paige’s, and I will tell you all about it.’”

When Ticknor arrived at Paige’s Boarding House that evening, he found Webster still mysterious and deeply troubled. “It is a long story,” Webster said. “I must make a speech to you about it.” He had just returned from Washington, where he had met with Abel P. Upshur, the new secretary of state, who complained to Webster about his job and admitted that he would leave were it not for one “particular object” Upshur wanted to “accomplish.” Upshur did not explain, but Webster thought he knew what Upshur would not reveal. “I felt Texas go through me,” he told Ticknor. Meeting with others in the capital, Webster quickly learned “all about it.” He was shocked “at the boldness of the Government,” which was, in fact, secretly negotiating with the Texans, offering to protect them from Mexican retaliation. Where this left the Constitution was anybody’s guess.

“We might … be in a war with Mexico at any time,” Webster continued, “with or without the authority of Congress.” Indeed it was almost “inevitable,” and Tyler seemed “willing to have such a war,” which Webster believed would “endanger the Union.” Ticknor had never seen Webster so upset: “He became very excited. He walked up and down the room fast and uneasily. He said he had not been able to sleep at night, and that he could think of little else during the day.” He urged Ticknor to meet with the city’s Whigs, both to see what he could learn and to determine if they were ready to openly combat this terrible prospect.¹

Time proved Webster right. Just a few months after his meeting with Ticknor, it was widely reported that a treaty annexing Texas was signed and would be submitted for ratification to the Senate.

 

 

U.S. presidents had their sights set on Texas long before Tyler came to power. In 1825, John Quincy Adams tried to buy part of the territory, but Mexico would not sell. Andrew Jackson made an attempt in 1829, but he failed too, and when his minister Anthony Butler (whom Jackson privately called “a scamp”) continued to meddle in Mexican affairs, the Mexican government expelled him in 1830. The Texas revolt in 1835 attracted American support, which intensified following Mexican atrocities at the Alamo and Goliad and Sam Houston’s surprising victory over General Antonio López de Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. Americans donated cash to the cause, organized rallies, and volunteered to fight alongside their Texas brothers, “bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh,” said one sympathetic congressman.²

But when Texas won its independence in 1836 and offered itself to the United States, President Jackson hesitated. The reason was slavery, which was legal and flourishing in Texas. Jackson realized that annexing Texas might bring the country near the breaking point. Northerners strongly opposed admitting Texas, and eight state legislatures sent Congress petitions warning against such action. Abolitionists, believing that the Texas revolution was simply a plot hatched by Southern slave owners, added their voices. William Lloyd Garrison, their most eloquent spokesman, called Texas “the ark of safety to swindlers, gamblers, robbers and rogues” who only wanted to “extend and perpetuate the most frightful form of servitude the world has ever known and add crime to crime.” Southerners overwhelmingly called for annexation, seeing it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to divide Texas into five slave states, thereby immensely increasing their power over national politics. As much as Jackson wanted Texas, he would not pay the price of a war abroad or at home.³

It was also a presidential election year, and if Jackson accepted Texas’s request it might tear the Democratic Party apart and deny the presidency to Martin Van Buren. So Jackson waited until after Van Buren was safely elected, and on his last day in office he formally recognized Texas’s independence. Van Buren proved equally cautious. Ending the Panic of 1837 was his chief objective. And on foreign policy he already faced the pesky Maine boundary dispute, so in 1837 he rejected the Texans’ renewed request for annexation. Americans, preoccupied by their own economic woes, had no taste for expansion, and were content with the status quo. For the next several years, Texas languished, a separate nation on the borders of the United States.⁴

Spurned by the Americans, the Republic of Texas went abroad in search of allies. Its ambassadors received a warm reception in France and especially in Great Britain. For the British, a thriving, independent Texas served many purposes. Strategically, it would block the United States’ further continental expansion while providing a protective barrier for British colonies in the western hemisphere. Economically, Texas cotton would free Britain from dependence on the American South, which had been cut off from trade during the War of 1812. Morally, British abolitionists hoped that the Texans would eliminate slavery, guiding its northern neighbor to emancipation. For the moment, however, all the British (and the French) would offer were treaties of “amity and commerce,” but it was still enough to feed American Anglophobia.

Where Jackson and Van Buren feared to tread—annexing Texas—Tyler was eager to go. It was the accidental president, historian Joel H. Sibley noted, who “unexpectedly took up what appeared to be a moribund political matter and succeeded in moving it to the center of the nation’s attention.”⁵

 

 

Tyler’s ambitions for Texas, though keen, at first took a backseat to other, more pressing problems. He expressed interest in annexing Texas early in his administration, first in a conversation with Webster, then again several months later: “[C]ould anything throw so bright a luster around us?” he wrote Webster in October 1841. “I really believe [that] it could be done.” But Webster, like most Northern Whigs, opposed annexation, and Tyler, faced with crises at home and abroad, decided that the time was not right to move forward. Indeed, though Texas president Sam Houston twice invited the United States to annex Texas in 1842, Tyler turned him down. “I wish to annex you,”Tyler told a Texas emissary, “but you see how I am situated.” Nevertheless, the president slowly positioned himself to achieve his goal. He appointed Waddy Thompson, an ardent annexationist, to be U.S. minister to Mexico and dispatched Duff Green, a Calhounite whom John Quincy Adams called the “ambassador of Slavery,” to Europe, where he would watch for British attentions toward Texas.⁶

By mid-1843, the administration’s achievements in foreign policy—the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, the Tyler Doctrine, and the opening of China—had demonstrated to Tyler what he could achieve through the vigorous (and secret) exercise of presidential power. He had successfully wielded his veto power to prevent unwise Whig policies from becoming law. He had more confidence in his abilities, and his happier private life also contributed to a sense of personal and political renewal.

The public also seemed tired of political squabbles over banks and tariffs; Manifest Destiny had captured their imagination. “Go to the West,” one congressman urged his countrymen, “and see a young man with his mate of eighteen; after the lapse of thirty years, visit him again, and instead of two, you’ll find twenty-two. This is what I call the American multiplication table.” Many were doing a similar math. Tyler desperately wanted to win election in 1844 and believed that acquiring Texas would earn him favor. “Action is what we want,” an impatient president remarked in the spring of 1843, “prompt and decisive action.”⁷

As his first act, he moved close friends into key posts in the administration. “I have been so long surrounded by men who now have smiles in their eyes,” Tyler noted, “and honey on their tongues, the better to cajole and deceive”—and he was tired of it. Following Webster’s resignation, he asked Attorney General Hugh Legaré, upon whom he depended for “calm and unimpassioned counsel,” to also serve briefly as interim secretary of state. A month later, he asked his old friend and fellow Virginian Abel Upshur, the former navy secretary, to move to the State Department and he agreed. Tyler and Upshur had much in common besides their native state. Both were born in 1790; they had studied law at the same time in Richmond, rose to be prominent lawyers, and served together in the Virginia House of Delegates. Both owned slaves. Most important, Upshur had a passion for annexing Texas that was even greater than the president’s, a view he shared with his close friend John C. Calhoun.

When news of Upshur’s appointment reached the Texas chargé in the capital, Isaac Van Zandt, he rejoiced: “It will be one of the best appointments for us. His whole soul is with us. He is an able man and has nerve to act.” Succeeding Upshur at the Navy Department was another member of Tyler’s “corporal’s guard,” former Virginia governor and congressman Thomas Gilmer, who had voted to sustain Tyler’s vetoes in the House. He too called for immediate annexation of Texas. Other appointees included Democrats and two graduates of the College of William and Mary. Tyler at long last felt at home with his cabinet.⁸

Yet a cabinet was not enough. Next, Tyler tried to build a political machine that would support him. Earlier in his career, he had attacked Andrew Jackson’s “spoils system,” which rewarded friends and allies with government posts. Now that Tyler was president, he found patronage to be a valuable tool to serve his purposes. The cabinet shuffling was accompanied by the removal of more than a hundred officials throughout the government, from foreign envoys to local postmasters. “We have numberless enemies in office and they should forthwith be made to quit,” Tyler wrote Secretary of the Treasury John C. Spencer. “The changes ought to be rapid and extensive and numerous—but we should have some assurances of support by the appointees.” Loyal Whig Philip Hone was especially incensed by Tyler’s removal of the Philadelphia Collector—“a fine old American gentleman”—along with thirty assistants “for the alleged crime of being friendly to Mr. Clay.” In their place, “Tyler Men” appeared.⁹

Tyler planned to outflank the Whigs by gaining support from the Democratic Party or possibly by creating a new party of unhappy Northern Democrats and Southern Whigs. Hoping to steal power from Martin Van Buren’s Democratic organization, Tyler chose as his New York representative Mike Walsh, a fiery Irish journalist and politico who voted with his fists. He and his personal gang of thugs (Hone called them “prize fighters and pardoned felons”) physically disrupted Whig meetings and could be relied upon to do the administration’s dirty work, regardless of the consequences. Walsh, of course, favored Texas annexation.¹⁰

Every presidential candidate of the day needed a biographer to burnish his image. Tyler found his in Alexander Abell, a journalist, who published The Life of John Tyler in 1843. To ensure that the book received wide attention, John Tyler, Jr., demanded that government employees buy “50 or 60 copies of the work to be distributed as you shall think best.” Historian Edward Crapol called it “a campaign of blatant political shakedowns.” One reader, Henry Huggins of New Haven, Connecticut, liked Abell’s book and agreed with the author that Tyler was “a patriot, statesman, and an honest man.” In return for his services, Abell was named counsel to Hawaii.¹¹

For his signature issue, Tyler chose Texas. A propaganda campaign had succeeded in Maine, so Tyler started one on behalf of the republic. Articles and editorials supporting annexation began to appear in friendly newspapers, and Tyler’s supporters in Congress called for action. Although many in his inner circle, such as Upshur, emphasized sectional benefits, Tyler took a more nationalist approach to annexation, downplaying the extension of slavery in favor of other factors. Manifest Destiny dictated the admission of Texas into the United States, which, as Jefferson had believed, needed to expand in order to survive. National security would be protected by preventing Texas from becoming a British satellite. There would be “fertile land for the expansion of agriculture, [and] ports and harbors for American trade.” And, for those Northerners unfriendly to slavery, Tyler offered again the theory of diffusion—slave owners leaving the South for opportunities in Texas would weaken the “peculiar institution” until it peacefully disappeared. Lest anyone believe that annexation was a cruel land grab at the expense of powerless Mexico, Tyler also argued that Texas was already American territory, having been a part of the Louisiana Purchase—an assertion that had no factual credibility.¹²

Tyler’s campaign was not immediately successful. Abolitionists and their allies, such as John Quincy Adams, denounced the president’s rosy view. As early as 1836, the Quaker activist Benjamin Lundy feared that annexation was nothing more than “a long premeditated crusade … set on foot by slaveholders, land speculators, etc., with the view of reestablishing, extending, and perpetuating the system of slavery and the slave trade.” When Representative Henry Wise, Tyler’s close friend, spoke imprudently about how Texas would “add more weight to [the South’s] end of the lever,” Adams attacked his “sinister motives” as typical of the “slave power conspiracy.”¹³

 

 

In June 1843, Tyler decided to renounce his traditional practice of avoiding political campaigning and take his case to the people. Accompanied by John Jr., Robert, Priscilla, and members of his cabinet, Tyler traveled to Boston to dedicate a memorial commemorating the Battle of Bunker Hill. In Baltimore and Philadelphia, they were met by huge crowds, many of whom had never seen a president. In New Jersey, naval captain Robert Stockton invited Tyler to tour the USS Princeton, an innovative vessel that was soon to be completed. Increasing the number of U.S. Navy ships was one of Tyler and Upshur’s proudest achievements, and the president told Stockton that he looked forward to the visit. Tyler was also greeted “by twenty-six of the most beautiful girls” Priscilla Tyler “ever saw, dressed in white with wreaths of flowers on their heads.” Later, the presidential party drove through the city in four wheeled carriages “drawn by six white horses and accompanied by forty young collegians—each mounted on one of Captain Stockton’s splendid race horses.”¹⁴

Their reception in New York City was splendid. When Tyler’s steamboat entered the harbor on June 12, he found it filled with ships of all kinds, from “men-at-war to club boats,” each beautifully decorated with colorful pennants. Naval vessels fired off presidential salutes, bands played, and a military honor guard welcomed him. Somewhere between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand people appeared to see “the man without a party.” Irish immigrants followed the procession carrying signs that read “Honest John Tyler” and “Justice to Ireland.” “Everybody stared at the President much as they would have stared at the Emperor of China,” noted one observer. Philip Hone declined to attend the festivities: “I did not choose to pay homage to the man who has deceived his friends, and betrayed those who spent time and money and comfort and lungs to place him where he is.”¹⁵

Tyler was somewhat apprehensive about stopping in Rhode Island. The year before, a rebellion had broken out against the state government, which, acting under the old Crown constitution, restricted voting to only men of property and their sons, thus disqualifying more than half of the voting population. The rebels, led by Thomas Dorr, created their own government and a “People’s Constitution,” which enfranchised the dispossessed. When the governor asked Tyler for help in crushing the revolt, Tyler felt caught in the middle—he was sympathetic to those unreasonably denied the franchise but he could not allow a recognized government to be overthrown. Tyler told the governor that he would send in troops only as a last resort and urged him to revise the ancient charter and offer the rebels pardons in return for their loyalty. When the crisis worsened, Tyler sent Secretary of War John C. Spencer to Rhode Island to signal that he was prepared to use force and the rebels fled. In April 1843, a new state constitution with more liberal voting rights was adopted, but Tyler worried that lingering bitterness would damage his visit. In the end, he found an “enthusiastic” crowd of well-wishers in Providence. State officials were more reserved—the governor’s introduction was only two sentences long—but Tyler replied warmly with some political boilerplate about how Rhode Island’s small size mattered less than its “pure and patriotic spirit.”¹⁶

His final destination, Boston, was “a hotbed of abolitionism” where some thought the president might not be welcome. Still, there were crowds and military salutes and “sumptuous” dinners and an elaborate parade in which Tyler again rode in a carriage drawn by six handsome horses. This time he did not have to suffer from the June heat and sat in the shade of an umbrella held by a slave. Was it meant as an intentional insult to his abolitionist critics—Tyler refused to meet with abolitionist Wendell Phillips, who planned to urge the president to free his slaves—or simply a form of comfort he, a Southern white man, had come to expect? The Bunker Hill monument was suitably dedicated and a crowd of one hundred thousand gathered to hear Daniel Webster and the president speak of “One Country, One Constitution, and One Destiny.” ¹⁷

The mere appearance of the despised Tyler in his beloved Boston was enough to drive John Quincy Adams to fury. He and the other antislavery congressmen boycotted the events. “What a name in the annals of mankind is Bunker Hill! What a day was the 17th of June, 1775! And what a burlesque upon them by Daniel Webster, and a pilgrimage by John Tyler and his cabinet of slave drivers, to desecrate the solemnity by their presence!” Adams wrote in his diary. “Daniel Webster spouting, and John Tyler’s nose, with a shadow outstretching that of the monumental column—how could I have witnessed all this at once, without an unbecoming burst of indignation, or of laughter? Daniel Webster is a heartless traitor to the cause of human freedom; John Tyler is a slave-monger … . What have these to do with a dinner in Faneuil Hall, but to swill like swine, and grunt about the rights of man?”¹⁸

Tyler’s offending visit was cut short after Attorney General Hugh Legaré, who had just arrived in Boston to attend the ceremonies, became ill and suddenly died, possibly from appendicitis. Tyler was “devastated.” “An excursion commenced in buoyancy and gladness, accompanied by the greetings and huzzas of unnumbered thousands, was terminated in sorrow and mourning,” Tyler recalled. The president’s party carried Legaré’s body to South Carolina, where he was buried, before returning to Washington.¹⁹

Despite this sad end, Tyler’s trip was a success. He found that his rather old-fashioned, patrician style of campaigning still worked in this age of political gimmickry. He tested his political rhetoric—many speeches mentioned Texas and Manifest Destiny—and it was heartily endorsed by the people. In Baltimore, New York, and Boston, he made valuable contacts with business and political leaders who he hoped would be useful in the future. But he was under no illusion that the crowds had come to see him personally: it was the office of the presidency that interested them, not its temporary occupant. He believed that he had a winning issue in Texas, and now he had to deliver on it.

 

 

Tyler’s secretary of state, Abel Upshur, was eager to help him in the cause. Upshur was obsessed with Texas. “I do not care to control any measure of policy except this; & I have reason to believe that no person but myself can control it,” he told a friend. Over the next several months, Upshur moved along a number of tracks. The propaganda campaign was accelerated, emphasizing the benefits of annexation but also intensifying Americans’ fears of Great Britain. Articles entitled “Designs of the British Government” were planted in administration organs such as the Washington Madisonian but also in the New York Herald, the most popular paper in the nation. Upshur met privately with U.S. senators to determine if the required two-thirds vote might be rallied. To win Northern Democrats, the president promised to support all American claims on the Oregon territory. Tyler’s old friend William and Mary law professor Beverley Tucker (who stood to profit financially if Texas was annexed) began drafting a treaty that would be acceptable to the Texans.²⁰

Sam Houston was naturally skeptical about the change in American policy toward Texas after Tyler’s earlier rejections. For the moment, he was more interested in resolving disputes with Mexico, which refused to recognize Texas independence and continued its violence against the republic. Houston’s reluctance led Upshur to work even harder to accede to Texas demands. One stumbling block was Texas’s demand for U.S. military protection if Houston signed a treaty. Mexico had informed the United States that annexation might mean war, but Tyler was nevertheless willing to give the Texans that assurance. He wanted Texas, and nothing would stop him—not the Mexicans, not the Senate, not even the Constitution. It was an “incredible role reversal,” historian Edward Crapol wrote. “[T]he man who claimed to be a strict constructionist had transformed into a gambler and risk taker who would play fast and loose with constitutional requirements … . Tyler apparently would go to any lengths to nab the proverbial brass ring.”²¹

By late February 1844, Upshur’s work was nearly done. The president approved a verbal agreement protecting Texas from attack, and the other details of annexation—transfer of territory, assumption of state debts, and the like—were mostly settled. A canvas of the Senate indicated that Tyler had or was close to securing the two-thirds vote required for ratification. Such a victory would poise him to win another term—perhaps even a significant place in American history.

Equally buoying was the return of Julia Gardiner to Washington. Julia, her sister, and her father arrived on February 24 just as the Texas deal seemed settled. Tyler had not seen the woman he considered his fiancée for almost a year, but he wrote to her often and “dreamily anticipated” her replies. He called her his “fairy girl” and sent her poems filled with romantic images of “setting suns, [and] stars peeping from behind their veils.” Julia often read Tyler’s poems to her parents, and her sister sometimes mailed them to her brothers, with a note attached: “[P]romise you won’t laugh.” On February 27, Tyler and Julia were reunited at a lavish White House party attended by hundreds of capital notables. He visibly brightened in her presence, noted one reporter, and “his thin long figure and prominent proboscis were everywhere amid the throng wheeling in ready obedience to the slightest pull of his tail-coat.” Many of the guests were talking excitedly about the following day’s historic event—a cruise down the Potomac of the USS Princeton, Commander Robert Stockton’s new steam-powered warship, the grandest vessel in the American navy. The Princeton carried the most powerful cannon ever built, the Peacemaker, capable of firing 228-pound balls at any enemy foolish enough to confront it. Those invited would witness a demonstration of the weapon’s might.²²

Wednesday, February 28, was a perfect day for the voyage at sea. The sky was cloudless, the Potomac calm, and the weather unusually mild for late winter. Stockton planned the events with meticulous care. There would be a luncheon of ham and roast fowl with plenty of wine and imported champagne. The guest list included the capital’s most distinguished officials: the president of the United States, his fiancée, her father, and members of the First Family and the cabinet, such as Secretary of State Upshur and Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer; Captain Beverly Kennon, chief of the navy’s bureau of construction; important members of Congress and the diplomatic corps; and Dolley Madison, the doyenne of Washington society. All told, more than four hundred people came aboard, and after the usual military salutes from cannon and bands the Princeton set sail “with majestic grace” on a course bound for Mount Vernon.

Twice that afternoon, the Peacemaker fired, its great cannonballs floating in the air until landing in the sea miles away. The spectators cheered enthusiastically and the band played “Hail to the Chief.” Lunch was served belowdecks promptly at 3:00 p.m. There were numerous toasts—to Captain Stockton, to the navy, to so many, in fact, that when Secretary Upshur rose to salute the president, he found his bottle empty. He asked that the “dead bodies” be removed so that he could proceed. “There are plenty of living bodies to replace the dead ones,” Stockton joked, handing Upshur an unopened bottle. The toast was made and returned by the president, who raised his glass “to the three great guns: the Princeton, her commander, and the Peacemaker.”

As the ship sailed home, there was a request for one last demonstration of the Peacemaker’s awesome power: Mount Vernon was nearby, and it would be a fitting way to honor George Washington’s memory. People climbed to the top deck, but Tyler stopped to listen as his son-in-law William Waller burst into a favorite Revolutionary War song. When Waller reached the word “Washington,” the Peacemaker roared again, louder this time, and Waller’s audience applauded. Suddenly, there was chaos. An officer, dazed and “blackened with powder,” rushed into the salon, calling for a surgeon. Then black smoke poured downstairs and the stunned silence was replaced by screams from above.

Julia Gardiner rushed for the stairs but was blocked by the crowd. “Let me go to my father!” she cried.

“My dear child, you can do no good,” someone said, trying to console her. “Your father is in heaven.” Julia barely heard the voice as she fell to the floor in a faint.

The Peacemaker had exploded, hurling huge chunks of molten iron at those on deck. Mortally wounded were Abel Upshur, his stomach torn apart; Thomas Gilmer, struck in the head by a jagged piece of metal; and David Gardiner, who bled to death after losing his arms and legs. Also dead were Virgil Maxcy, a diplomat, Beverly Kennon, and Armistead, the president’s valet. More than twenty others were injured, including Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who was briefly knocked unconscious. Captain Stockton suffered serious burns to his face and scalp. “My God!” he screamed. “Would that I were dead, too.” By the time Tyler reached the deck, the smoke had cleared and the signs of the carnage were everywhere: the mutilated dead were covered by flags and blankets, but torn limbs lay about like sticks. Sailors, “blood oozing from their ears and nostrils,” wandered aimlessly while the navy’s guests, their clothes torn and stained with blood, stood in shocked disbelief. When the president was shown the bodies of Upshur and Gilmer, he wept.

The president remained on board the Princeton until the dead were removed, then, cradling a still unconscious Julia in his arms, he made his way carefully down the gangway. Julia awoke, so startled that her shaking body almost sent them both tumbling into the water. Once safely ashore, they went immediately to the White House. “Joy is turned into mourning,” Tyler noted. “The morning, so bright and cloudless, is succeeded by an evening of deep gloom and sorrow.”²³

Washington was stunned by the tragedy. Nothing like it had ever happened to America’s government in peace or war. Congress adjourned, the White House again wore black crepe, and the East Room, which a few nights before was a place of revelry, became “a sepulchral chamber, cold and silent as the grave.” For two days, five flag-draped coffins lay in state and thousands of citizens passed by to pay their respects. (Missing was Armistead, whose coffin was turned over to his family.) For the third time since 1841, the Reverend William Hawley conducted a White House funeral.²⁴

Returning from the burial at the congressional cemetery, the president narrowly escaped death once more. On Pennsylvania Avenue, Tyler’s carriage horses suddenly bolted. The driver and John Jr. tried to rein in the horses, but nothing slowed them; as they raced through the crowded market district, pedestrians scattered for safety. At Fourteenth Street, a black man, never identified, “stepped out and stopped the team, saving the president from harm for the second time in four days.”²⁵

For Tyler, life had become a series of endless tragedies: William Henry Harrison’s death in 1841; Letitia Tyler’s fatal stroke in 1842; Attorney General Hugh Legaré’s sudden passing in 1843; and now the death of his fiancée’s father and his two most trusted advisors. His own near-death experience carried extra foreboding alongside these losses. Despite his efforts to comfort Julia, she continued to suffer from “an agony of grief.” She was plagued by awful dreams of her dead father, and when she awoke she was convinced that he had visited her. She spent many nights waiting for him to reappear. Less than a week after the accident, she left the White House to attend to her father’s final interment in East Hampton, her relationship with the president still not clarified. He too was haunted by the Princeton disaster: describing that day’s terrible events to his brother-in-law, Tyler broke into tears.²⁶

Tyler’s emotional state may explain his appointment of John C. Calhoun to fill Abel Upshur’s post as secretary of state. The apparent handiwork of Tyler’s close friend, Virginia congressman Henry Wise, it was one of Tyler’s greatest mistakes. Within hours of the Princeton tragedy Wise, believing that annexation belonged in “safe Southern hands,” concluded that those hands were Calhoun’s. He met with South Carolina senator George McDuffie, a Calhoun intimate, to discuss it. McDuffie, believing that Wise had brought an offer directly from the president, passed it on to Calhoun.

When Wise informed Tyler of his talk with McDuffie, the president was shocked. “You are the most extraordinary man I ever saw!” he yelled. “The most willful and wayward, the most incorrigible!” Calhoun would be a terrible choice. Although Tyler and the “cast iron man” were both loyal Southerners and states’ rights men, Tyler was no nullifier. He feared that Calhoun’s appointment would needlessly antagonize Texas’s enemies—Northerners who feared the extension of slavery, radicals in the abolitionist community, and skeptics in the Senate. With Calhoun as secretary of state, annexation would become synonymous with slavery, the obverse of Tyler’s efforts to win national support for Texas. Furthermore, although Calhoun had recently withdrawn from the 1844 presidential contest, annexing Texas might revive his candidacy. But the deed was done. To withdraw the “offer” would embarrass Calhoun, lose Tyler important Southern support in the Senate, and injure Wise, whose long years of loyal service Tyler appreciated. Tyler sent Calhoun’s nomination to the Senate, which confirmed him unanimously.

To salvage the situation, Tyler pushed to complete the final negotiations before Calhoun took office. He met personally with the Texans to expedite matters. Unfortunately, the chief Texas envoy, General James Pinckney Harrison, could not reach Washington before Calhoun was sworn in as secretary of state.²⁷

At first, Tyler and Calhoun worked well together. Meeting with the Texans, the new secretary discovered their demand for an even stronger guarantee of U.S. military protection than Upshur’s previous assurances. Tyler ordered Calhoun to give it to them. In writing, Calhoun informed the Texas diplomats that the president had ordered the secretary of the navy to dispatch “a strong naval force to concentrate in the gulf of Mexico, to meet any emergency, and that similar orders have been issued by the Secretary of War to move the disposable military forces on our Southwestern frontier for the same purpose.” To pay for the naval buildup, Tyler simply drew $100,000 from the secret service contingency fund.

Tyler took no chances; he wanted to acquire Texas, one way or another. He promised that he would “use all the means placed within his power by the Constitution to protect Texas from all foreign invasion.” Should the Senate reject the treaty, he would recommend “in the strongest terms” that Texas be annexed through the constitutional provision allowing Congress to admit new states into the Union. These terms satisfied the Texans and, on April 12, 1844, the formal treaty of annexation was prepared and signed, by Calhoun for the United States and Harrison and Van Zandt for Texas. Ten days later, John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary: “This was a memorable day in the annals of the world. The treaty for the annexation of Texas to this Union was this day sent into the Senate; and with it went the freedom of the human race.”²⁸