Born: March 29, 1790, Died: January 18, 1862 --Nickname: "Accidental President;" "His Accidency"

John Tyler signaled the last gasp of the Old Virginia aristocracy in the White House. Born a few years after the American Revolution in 1790 to an old family from Virginia’s ruling class, Tyler graduated from the College of William and Mary at the age of seventeen, studied law, and went to work for a prestigious law firm in Richmond.

He launched his political career by becoming a state legislator (1811-1816). After serving five years in the state legislature, Tyler was a member of the U. S. House of Representatives (1817-1821) and later of the Senate (1827-1836). He also served, uneventfully, as governor of Virginia (1825-1827) and as both rector and chancellor of the College of William and Mary.

Following the political tradition of Virginia, Tyler was a strict constructionist, who believed that federal powers should be limited to those enumerated in the Constitution. Throughout his career he was an outspoken opponent of the Bank of the United States on the ground that Congress lacked power to charter it. His first politically prominent act was to introduce a censure of Virginia's U. S. senators, who had deviated from their instructions by supporting and, in the case of one, voting for the recharter of the bank in 1811. On one occasion, however, political expediency led Tyler to side with the bank advocates against President Andrew Jackson. In 1836, when the Senate voted to expunge from its Journal the censure of Jackson for his removal of federal funds from the bank, Tyler refused to vote for it as directed by the Virginia legislature. Instead, he resigned his seat, thereby enhancing his reputation as one of President Jackson's most implacable foes.

Regarding other issues of the day, Tyler objected with equal force to the distribution of public lands to homesteaders, to internal improvements at federal expense, to Jackson's "executive usurpation," and to the protective tariff. A slave owner, he opposed interference with slavery by the federal government or by states outside the South.

John Tyler had served as Congressman, Senator and Governor of Virginia before being chosen as William Henry Harrison's Vice Presidential running mate in 1840. General Harrison had won the Battle of Tippecanoe against Tecumseh's impressive Native American forces, and the "Tippecanoe" slogan became the centerpiece of the Whigs' 1840 campaign. Tyler had actually been a member of the Democrat party until 1833, when he had to leave the party because he dared to oppose Andrew Jackson's programs. For whatever reason, the Whigs chose the independent Tyler to run with "Ol' Tippecanoe", never dreaming of what would follow.

After winning the election, President Harrison gave a long-winded inaugural speech (the longest ever) in a cold March rain, caught pneumonia and died exactly one month later, after having served the shortest time of any President before or since. The Whigs were now stuck with Tyler, the first President ever to come to office by constitutional succession, who had not exhibited any deep allegiance to Whig principles. Almost immediately, things began to unravel.

When Harrison died after only a month in office, Tyler, on April 6, 1841, took the oath of office prescribed for the president in the Constitution. He knew that the nationalist Whigs intended to force him to accept their legislative program against his constitutional principles, but he was determined to be accepted as the president and not merely as acting president. The cabinet and Congress agreed, and as the Constitution was not explicit on succession, both the House and Senate passed resolutions recognizing Tyler as president.

Shortly afterward, however, Congress passed two bills to create a new Bank of the United States. Tyler vetoed both as unconstitutional, the second amid charges that he had expressed his approval privately before it was passed. During the uproar that followed, Clay argued that Tyler ought to abide by the views of his cabinet and the congressional majority and sign the bank bill. Alternatively, he should resign from office, as he had done in 1836 when he disagreed with the Virginia legislature. The analogy was false in that U. S. senators at the time were elected by the members of the state legislatures, but presidents were not chosen by Congress.

In an apparent attempt to force Tyler out of office, all the members of the cabinet except Webster resigned in allegiance to Clay. Acting with a speed that suggested he had anticipated this turn of events, Tyler named the new secretaries in two days. On Sept. 13, 1841, the day the Senate confirmed the cabinet appointments, the Whig caucus declared all party ties with Tyler dissolved on the ground that he was seeking to build a new political party. The congressional Whigs then used every difference with the president as an occasion to charge him with "executive usurpation"the same charge the party had made against Jackson.

Relations became so strained that Tyler was placed in the position of vetoing more bills than Jackson had. In 1842, when the House adopted a resolution charging him with offenses justifying impeachment for vetoing a protective tariff, Tyler sent a "Protest Message" as Jackson had done in 1834. The president succeeded in forcing Congress to pass separate bills for a mildly protective tariff and for distribution of the proceeds from the sale of public lands. He then approved the tariff and pocket-vetoed the distribution bill.

In the congressional elections that followed, the Whigs lost control of the House. Tyler perceived this defeat as a sign of public support. In March 1845, however, Congress for the first time in history overrode a presidential veto of a tariff bill.

Having reorganized his cabinet, Tyler devoted his attention to a highly successful foreign policy. He guided negotiations to secure the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, settling the Maine boundary dispute and other issues. In 1842 he extended the Monroe Doctrine, in effect, to the Hawaiian Islands to thwart British interests in the area and sent a trade mission to China.

Tyler initiated the annexation of Texas. When the treaty he negotiated was rejected by the Senate in June 1844, he suggested that a joint resolution might work just as well. He made annexation a major campaign issue in 1844 and maneuvered both Clay and Van Buren into positions on it that kept both from succeeding him as president. Tyler wavered between creating a new party and imposing himself on the Democrats as their candidate. Succeeding in neither, he considered running as an independent to throw the election into the House but desisted when the Democrats nominated James K. Polk and supported annexation. In the last days of his administration, Congress passed a joint resolution for annexation.

Tyler retired to his plantation in 1845. In February 1861 he returned to public life, chairing the peace convention called to attempt to avert civil war. After Virginia seceded, he served in the provisional Confederate Congress and was elected to its House of Representatives. Tyler died in Richmond, Va., on January 18, 1862, before taking his seat.

Tyler built his political career on a defense of the interests of the slave-owning planter class of Southern coastal areas. He said in 1834: "The Southern states are in constant apprehension lest the national government should be converted into a mere majority machine." As president and to the end of his life, he paid his highest allegiance to Virginia and to limited Southern interests.

Tyler married Letitia Christian on March 29, 1813. They had eight children, among them Robert Tyler, lawyer, politician, and newspaper editor, whose wife, Priscilla Cooper Tyler, acted as White House hostess during the First Lady's illness. Two years after the death of his first wife, Tyler married Julia Gardiner, on June 26, 1844, becoming the first president to marry while in office. They had seven children.