Accidental President Series - John Tyler: Many Firsts

We explore the controversial and complex life of John Tyler, the first man to become president after the death of the incumbent.  

Transcript

Accidental President Series – John Tyler and His Many Firsts

October 2025

My own personal popularity cannot influence me when the dictates of my best judgment and the obligations of an oath require me to take a particular course. Under such circumstances, whether I sink or swim on the tide of popular favor is, to me, a matter of inferior consideration. 

There will be found to exist at all times an imperious necessity for restraining all the functionaries of the Government within the range of their respective powers, thereby preserving a just balance between the powers granted to this Government and those reserved to the States and to the people.

If we can complete the great work of reconciliation, I confess myself to sharing in the grand and magnificent result.

In 1861, Tyler was trying for peace after secession.  

The first five presidents all served in one capacity or another in the American War for Independence, yet none sustained wounds that haunted their later years.  The seventh president, Jackson, was not exactly a picture of health when he occupied the White House.  Jackson endured chronic pain from a bullet lodged in his chest. He experienced frequent bouts of dysentery, malaria, and other fevers, which were often treated with calomel (mercury-containing medication). His health issues also included migraines and dental problems.  And yet woe betide anyone who crossed him, and he managed to live nearly a decade after he left office.  And given the nature of 19th-century medicine, I am always amazed we were nine presidents before one of them shed his mortal coil for the afterlife while in office.   

As we shall see, John Tyler ran as the Vice President in 1840, running on a ticket with General William Henry Harrison 1840.  After the party reforms enacted by Jackson’s protégé and President Martin Van Buren, it was important for a duo in 1840 to run a campaign with a bit of pizzazz.  Because the War of 1812 battle of Tippecanoe garnered Harrison fame, the slogan Tippecanoe and Tyler too was utilized.  Maybe I like Ike can best it, but for my money, that is the best slogan out of the 59 presidential elections we have had, or should I say endured?  

After winning the election, the day of Harrison’s inauguration—March 4, 1841—was wet and cold.  The president-elect, however, opted to forego an overcoat or top hat. His inaugural address totaled 8,445 words (this podcast runs around 3,200 for perspective) and took nearly two hours to deliver. Harrison was also 68. For further context, it took another 120 years (and some serious medical advancement) before another president would be older on election day (Ronald Reagan). Three weeks later—after another extended outing in the rain—Harrison developed pneumonia and, later, severe diarrhea. He died on April 4, after just 31 days in office. 

Though historians long attributed his death to pneumonia, recent scholarship suggests that the White House’s drinking water was contaminated by public sewage and that Harrison likely died from septic shock.  Regardless of the cause, his death made Harrison’s presidential term the shortest in American history.  

Tyler’s presidency was notable for many reasons, but perhaps his paramount accomplishment was to set a clear precedent for succession upon the death of a sitting president.  When Harrison died, Tyler immediately and unequivocally assumed the presidency.  Without his determination, the question might have been thrown open to those who opposed his assuming the office.  His example meant that Presidents Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson could all succeed to the presidency without incident. 

Other firsts were less laureled.  He was the first president to have his veto overridden and to be thrown out of his own party while in office.  The latter was due to his opposition to Whig Party policies, such as the establishment of a national bank and the raising of tariffs.  One of the ongoing economic battles between the North and South during this period was the desire of Southern farmers to export their crops to foreign markets, while Northerners aimed to protect their manufacturing and commercial sectors from imported goods.  The tool to use, and one of the key revenue generators for the federal Government, was tariffs, which Tyler opposed.  

Tyler’s unexpected rise to power, his defiance of party expectations, and his complex political philosophy make him one of the most intriguing and controversial figures in American political history. Though his presidency was marked by significant constitutional precedent and foreign policy achievements, it also exposed deep divisions within the American political system. It foreshadowed the crises that would erupt in the decades leading to the Civil War.

John Tyler was born on March 29, 1790, in Charles City County, Virginia, into a prominent planter family. Educated at the College of William and Mary, Tyler was deeply influenced by the Jeffersonian ideals of states’ rights, limited Government, and strict constitutional interpretation. He studied law and entered politics at a young age, serving in the Virginia House of Delegates before being elected to the US House of Representatives in 1816. As a congressman, Tyler was an advocate of the Democratic-Republican Party and a staunch opponent of federal overreach, aligning himself with figures like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Tyler’s career advanced steadily: he served as governor of Virginia (1825–1827) and later as a US senator (1827–1836). During his time in the Senate, Tyler opposed many of the nationalist policies of Henry Clay and the Whigs, as well as the executive assertiveness of President Andrew Jackson. He found himself politically homeless—too anti-Jacksonian for Democrats but too committed to states’ rights for Whigs. His resignation from the Senate in 1836 over a dispute concerning state sovereignty underscored his principled, albeit rigid, political character.

Tyler’s path to the presidency was shaped by the turbulent election of 1840. The Whig Party, seeking to capitalize on public discontent with the Democratic administration of Martin Van Buren, nominated the war hero William Henry Harrison for President and chose Tyler, the former Democrat, as his running mate in an effort to balance the ticket geographically and ideologically. 

Most of us were born after the passage of the 25th Amendment, which clearly spells out presidential succession, and we have Tyler’s example to guide us. However, the powers of the Vice President were not quite so clear before 1840. The US Constitution provided that the vice president would assume the “powers and duties” of the presidency in the event of the President’s death. Still, it did not specify whether the vice president would become the President in name. Tyler resolved the ambiguity decisively by declaring himself President rather than acting President, setting a crucial precedent for presidential succession. Despite opposition from some members of Congress who derisively called him “His Accidency,” Tyler firmly established the principle that the vice president becomes the full President upon the death of the incumbent.

A President Without a Party

Once in office, Tyler quickly found himself at odds with the Whig Party leadership. Henry Clay, the dominant Whig in Congress, sought to use the new administration to enact the Whig legislative agenda, including the reestablishment of a national bank, protective tariffs, and federal funding for internal improvements. Tyler, a committed states’ rights advocate, vetoed Clay’s bills to create a new Bank of the United States, arguing that such an institution was unconstitutional and an overreach of federal power.

These vetoes enraged the Whigs, who expelled Tyler from the party in 1841—the first and only time a sitting president has been formally cast out by his own political party. His entire cabinet, except for Secretary of State Daniel Webster, resigned in protest. Isolated and vilified, Tyler attempted to govern as an independent, relying on his constitutional convictions rather than party alliances. His administration became a cautionary tale of how deeply divided party politics had become in the antebellum United States. “Tyler’s record also demonstrates the particular hazards that face accidental presidents.  Those whose principles are at odds with their predecessor and political party, as was the case with Tyler and later, Andrew Johnson,” adds May. 

As Professor of Humanities William Freehling, writing for the Miller Center, notes, “However, it could be argued that the very stubbornness that undermined Tyler’s work as President led to his greatest contribution to the office. By claiming the right to a fully functioning and empowered presidency instead of relinquishing the office or accepting limits on his powers, Tyler set a hugely important precedent. And while it is doubtless that the presidency’s first veto override—on his last day in office—brought little joy to the troubled President, it was instrumental in establishing the critical system of inter-branch checks and balances. The orderly transfer of power at the beginning of Tyler’s term and the veto override that ended it both demonstrated that the system worked.”

Despite political isolation, Tyler achieved notable successes, particularly in foreign affairs and westward expansion. One of his key accomplishments was the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, negotiated by Daniel Webster, which resolved long-standing boundary disputes between the United States and British Canada, improving Anglo-American relations and paving the way for peaceful coexistence along the northern frontier.  If we are to judge solely by some of these accounts, Tyler appears to be some firebrand in the mold of Webster or even Johnson.  Yet his demeanor was that of the mild-mannered gentleman planter of Virginia.  

Tyler also pursued an ambitious policy of territorial expansion. He recognized the potential strategic and economic importance of Texas, which had declared independence from Mexico in 1836. Although initial efforts to annex Texas were blocked by the Senate, mainly due to the contentious issue of slavery, Tyler’s persistence eventually paid off. In the final days of his presidency, he succeeded in securing congressional approval for the annexation of Texas through a joint resolution in March 1845, just before leaving office. This decision, while popular among expansionists, further inflamed sectional tensions over the expansion of slavery and set the stage for the Mexican-American War under his successor, James K. Polk. Many have placed the origins of the Civil War at Tyler’s doorstep for initiating and championing the acquisition of Texas. Still, the roots of that expansion both predated him, with the Texas Republic declared before his tenure, and fellow Southerner Polk did the heavy lifting.  It was a team effort.  

While serving in his 2nd year, Tyler experienced the tragic death of his first wife, Letitia Christian Tyler, who died in the White House. During his last year of office, Tyler married Julia Gardiner Tyler, a woman 30 years his junior, on June 26, 1844, while he was still President. The marriage took place in New York after a secret engagement that was solidified following a naval disaster on the USS Princeton, which killed Julia’s father.  This was yet another precedent for Grover Cleveland, who also married (in this case, his first and only wife) while he was President, and like Tyler, was more than two decades older than his bride. Due to the two marriages, the youth of his second, Tyler, also holds the record for having sired the most children, with an astounding 15.  

After leaving office, Tyler returned to his Virginia plantation, Sherwood Forest, and largely withdrew from national politics. Henry Clay expressed his pleasure at Tyler’s departure and said the Whig political outlaw could return, like Robin Hood, to his Sherwood Forest. Embracing the gibe, Tyler changed the name of his plantation from Walnut Grove to Sherwood Forest.

However, as sectional tensions deepened in the 1850s, he reemerged as a defender of Southern interests. In 1861, he chaired the Peace Conference in Washington in a last-ditch effort to prevent the Civil War. When those efforts failed, Tyler sided with his native Virginia and the Confederacy, serving briefly in the Confederate House of Representatives before his death in January 1862. His decision to support secession has complicated his historical reputation, as he remains the only US president to have openly aligned with a government in rebellion against the United States. As biographer Gary May notes, “it is unlikely that Tyler’s reputation will recover from his last acts.”

Since the last Southerners to hold office were Harrison, James Polk, and Zachary Taylor, all dead at the time of the Civil War, Tyler was the only ex-president to serve the South, but he was the only one who would really make the choice. As much as still living presidents Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan had strong Southern sympathies, as Northerners, they were never going to join the Confederacy.  

Depending on where one sits in the political divide, evaluating Tyler is a challenge.  He opposed Jackson’s spoils system, did not favor recess appointment power, and opposed national infrastructure and national banks.  Supporting a smaller Government at the federal level and advocating for states’ rights is positive for conservatives.  Writing for the Foundation of Economic Education, Justin Madura states, “And as the current US government regularly overspends, overtaxes, and overinflates, perhaps we could benefit from Tyler-like attitudes on limited government spending and sound money. In short, perhaps all Americans can add new depth to how we perceive many of our modern political problems by studying the Virginia statesman who favored the Constitution, sought the example of the “fathers of the great republican school” who crafted it, and confided in “the protecting care of an ever watchful and overruling Providence.”

However, Tyler was a states’ rights advocate in terms wishing to see the continuance of slavery and, like John C Calhoun, knew that if a national referendum were enacted on the subject, the South would lose.  If a state is allowed to continue a horrific policy, then it is a reason for the federal Government to intervene and end the policy.  Yet his most important legacy will be something akin to that of his hero, the Virginian predecessor Washington.  As the first person to assume office at the death of a president, Tyler’s decisions at that time ensured that succession would occur smoothly afterward.   As May states, “For good and ill, Tyler preserved and defended the office from those who wished to change it fundamentally… Future presidents could govern with authority.”

Writing for History.com, Christopher Klein, “n his post-presidential years, Tyler opposed limitations on the expansion of slavery and after the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln wrote, “The day of doom for the great model republic is at hand.” In early 1861, as southern states began to secede, Tyler chaired an unsuccessful peace conference in a last-ditch attempt to preserve the Union. Once the Civil War began, however, Tyler voted for Virginia to leave the nation over which he once presided. He led the committee negotiating the terms of Virginia’s admission into the Confederacy and won election to the Confederate House of Representatives. He died, however, on January 18, 1862, before taking his seat.

Lincoln did not issue the customary official proclamation to observe Tyler’s passing. At the same time, the New York Times obituary noted that he had left the presidency as “the most unpopular public man that had ever held any office in the United States.”

Some of Tyler’s successors didn’t think very highly of him either. Harry Truman called him “one of the presidents we could have done without.” “He has been called a mediocre man, but this is unwarranted flattery,” said Theodore Roosevelt. “He was a politician of monumental littleness.”

Coming from the bellicose Roosevelt, a little perspective is in order.  The reality of Tyler supporting slavery in the South, by a southern man, was not exactly unique in 1860. And as noted, as the only living President from the South, he might have had company if fortune looked a little differently.  What was unique about Tyler was his precedent of presidential succession, his belief in small Government and curbs on the executive, and his efforts at peace in 1861.  Those, too, need to be remembered and yes, admired.