John Tyler: The Pariah President of the US
John Tyler (1790-1862) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the tenth president of the United States. His presidency was a tumultuous one – initially elected as vice president, he came to office after the death of his predecessor, William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), leading political opponents to refer to him as 'His Accidency'. After vetoing two bills that would establish a national bank, he was exiled from the Whig Party, leaving him politically isolated. Hoping to save his sinking popularity, he turned the focus of his administration toward the annexation of Texas, which was ultimately achieved in 1845. After his single term in office, he supported the South during the sectional crisis that preceded the American Civil War (1861-1865). When Virginia voted to secede from the Union, Tyler was elected to the Confederate Congress, but he was yet to take his seat when he died in January 1862.
Early Life & Career
John Tyler was born on 29 March 1790 on Greenway Plantation, a 1,200-acre estate built by his father in Charles City County, Virginia. He came from a wealthy, slave-holding family that could trace its roots back to the earliest English settlement of Virginia. His father, John Tyler Sr., was a prominent planter and public official; a friend and colleague of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the elder Tyler had served as Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates in the 1780s and would later become governor of Virginia from 1808 to 1811. His mother, Mary Marot Armistead Tyler, also came from a wealthy Virginian family; tragically, she died of a stroke in 1797, when Tyler was only 7 years old. Growing up on the plantation with his two brothers and five sisters, Tyler was a sickly child, thin and prone to diarrhea. At the age of 12, he entered the College of William and Mary. He graduated in 1807, after which he began reading law under the supervision of his father. In 1809, he was admitted to the Virginia bar; still only 19 years old, he was technically too young to be admitted, but the admitting judge overlooked this qualification.
In December 1811, Tyler followed in his father's footsteps when he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, beginning the first of five consecutive one-year terms. By the end of his first term, he had begun to develop some of the political convictions he would carry with him throughout his career, such as his strong support of states' rights and an aversion to national banks. He supported the War of 1812 (1812-1815) against the United Kingdom and even raised a militia company, called the Charles City Rifles, to defend Richmond in the event of a British attack; in 1813, when it became clear no such attack was forthcoming, the company disbanded. The year 1813 saw two major developments in Tyler's personal life. The first was the death of his father on 6 January, after which he inherited Greenway Plantation as well as 13 enslaved African Americans. The second was his marriage to Letitia Christian on 29 March. Letitia's parents had died shortly before the marriage, leaving the newlywed couple with large inheritances from both sides of the family. The marriage would ultimately produce nine children, seven of whom survived childhood.
In 1816, Tyler won a special election to fill a vacant seat in the US House of Representatives. In Congress, many of his positions were guided by a strict constructionist interpretation of the US Constitution. For instance, he opposed appropriating federal funds for internal improvement projects such as ports, canals, and roadways because he believed the federal government had no power to sign off on such ventures. Similarly, he opposed the Second Bank of the United States because he saw it as a corrupt institution that wielded too much power. In 1818, he joined several of his colleagues in denouncing General Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) for his actions in Spanish Florida, which included the illegal executions of two British subjects – while Tyler admitted that he admired Jackson's character, he could not condone his actions. In 1820, Tyler reluctantly voted for the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri into the Union as a 'slave state' in exchange for Maine's entry as a 'free state' as well as the prohibition of slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel. He would later express regret for voting for the compromise, believing that it only enflamed the sectional divide between North and South over the question of slavery.
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⇒ John Tyler: The Pariah President of the US
