How To Draw John Tyler

Contributor: the Dictionary of Virginia Biography

Early Years

College of William and Mary

Tyler was born on March 29, 1790, at Greenway, his family's plantation in Charles City County. His father, John Tyler, had been Speaker of the House of Delegates during the 1780s and a member of the Convention of 1788. His mother, Mary Armistead Tyler, died of a stroke when he was seven years old. Five years later Tyler entered the preparatory department of the College of William and Mary and at age fourteen began his college coursework. After completing his studies in 1807, he read law with his father (who served as governor of Virginia from 1808 to 1811 and as a federal district court judge from 1811 to 1813) before being admitted to the bar in 1809. On March 29, 1813, Tyler married Letitia Christian. They had three sons and five daughters, one of whom died at birth.

The House of Representatives, 1815–1820

Tyler embarked on his long public career in December 1811 when he began the first of five consecutive one-year terms representing Charles City County in the House of Delegates. Despite his youth, on December 8, 1815, the General Assembly elected him to the Council of State. In November 1816 Tyler won a special election to a vacant seat in the House of Representatives from the district that included the city of Richmond and Charles City, Hanover, Henrico, and New Kent counties. He won election to full terms in 1817 and 1819. A Democrat-Republican supporting states' rights, limited government, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution, Tyler opposed rechartering the Bank of the United States, increasing protective tariffs, appropriating federal funds for internal improvements, and Andrew Jackson's military campaigns during the First Seminole War.

Tyler initially opposed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, because he viewed it as unconstitutional and thought that new states should decide for themselves whether to permit slavery. A lifelong slaveholder, he believed the institution was a necessary evil and that it needed to expand into the western territories to disperse the slave population, which would ease problems of slave management and allow for better treatment of bondspeople because of increased demand for their labor. Tyler also argued that the political viability for eventual emancipation could be strengthened if the slave population of the older southern states was thinned out. He eventually voted for the compromise but later regretted his decision because he believed that it contributed to sectional discord in subsequent decades.

Andrew Jackson. President of the United States.

Poor health prohibited him from seeking another term in 1821, but two years later Charles City County voters returned him to the House of Delegates, where he served three consecutive one-year terms. The General Assembly elected him to a one-year term as governor on December 10, 1825. Tyler busied himself with the routine duties of the chief executive, which often related to state appointments, public improvements, the penitentiary, the militia, and military bounty claims. The assembly reelected him to another term in December 1826, but on January 13, 1827, it elected him to the U.S. Senate. Tyler's resignation as governor took effect on March 4, the day the congressional term began. Elected as a Jacksonian, Tyler objected to funding internal improvements, raising tariffs, and rechartering the Bank of the United States.

The Convention of 1829–1830

Virginia Constitutional Convention

Tyler was one of four delegates elected to represent Richmond and Williamsburg and the counties of Charles City, Elizabeth City, James City, Henrico, New Kent, Warwick, and York in a convention that met in Richmond from October 5, 1829, to January 15, 1830, to revise the state constitution. He voted with the eastern members against most of the proposed democratic changes. Tyler supported slight modifications in legislative apportionment, but he opposed wholesale changes that would have resulted in a more-equitable distribution of power between the eastern and western sections of Virginia. He also favored retaining the advisory Council of State on the grounds that executive powers should not be held by one official. On January 14, 1830, Tyler voted with the majority for the revised constitution that the voters later ratified but that did not contain any significant democratic reforms.

The U.S. Senate, 1827–1836

Second Bank of the United States

Reelected to the U.S. Senate on February 15, 1833, Tyler began to oppose Jackson's policies. He had questioned the constitutionality of rechartering the Bank of the United States but believed that the president's plan to remove the bank's deposits and place them in state banks signaled Jackson's attempt to increase his authority over the treasury to autocratic levels. Tyler split with the president during the Nullification Crisis and opposed Jackson's plan for military collection of duties in Charleston, South Carolina. Emphasizing states' rights and his trepidation about placing too much power in the presidency, Tyler was the only senator to vote against the so-called Force Bill that would have empowered Jackson to take additional measures to enforce federal law in South Carolina. In February 1836 Tyler resigned from the Senate rather than obey the General Assembly's instructions to introduce and vote for a resolution to expunge an 1834 senatorial censure of Jackson that had been passed following the president's dismissal of the treasury secretary and removal of Bank of the United States deposits.

The People

After his break with Jackson and the Democrats, Tyler gravitated toward the Whig Party and in 1836 ran for vice president on an unsuccessful Whig ticket with Tennessee senator Hugh Lawson White. The three Whig presidential candidates divided the vote that year, enabling the Democrat, Martin Van Buren, to win the election, but Tyler received forty-seven electoral votes from Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

In January 1839 Tyler returned to the House of Delegates representing Williamsburg and James City and York counties and late that same year became the compromise nominee of the Whig Party for vice president on the ticket with William Henry Harrison. Nominated to draw states' rights southerners who did not support Jacksonian Democracy, Tyler never fully embraced the Whig ideology and was not comfortable during the campaign with its Tippecanoe and Tyler Too slogan that combined Harrison's nationalism with Tyler's southern sectionalism.

The Tyler Administration

1840 Presidential Campaign

Harrison and Tyler won the election in November 1840. Harrison was inaugurated on March 4, 1841, but he developed pneumonia several weeks later and died on April 4. Tyler took the presidential oath two days later to become the tenth president of the United States and at age fifty-one the youngest man to hold the office to that date. He was also the first vice president to assume office after the death of a president. After some heated debate, Congress confirmed Tyler's interpretation that he was, indeed, the new president rather than simply the vice president or acting president.

Daniel Webster

Dubbed His Accidency, Tyler soon clashed with Harrison's cabinet and the Whig Congress. Adhering to his states' rights, strict-constructionist ideology and having joined the Whigs only in opposition to Jackson, he did not embrace the American System of internal improvements, protective tariffs, and a national bank of the party leader, Senator Henry Clay. Following Tyler's veto of several Whig banking bills, in September 1841 all the members of the cabinet except Secretary of State Daniel Webster resigned in protest, a maneuver that Clay had engineered to force the president to resign. Tyler stood his ground and quickly named a new cabinet. Drummed out of the Whig Party for his repeated opposition to the party's agenda, Tyler faced political turmoil during the remainder of his administration as cabinet membership changed often and many of his appointees did not receive Senate confirmation. Congressional Whigs were so furious at Tyler's repeated vetoes that they spoke of impeachment as early as August 1842, and Virginia congressman John Minor Botts introduced an unsuccessful impeachment resolution in January 1843.

Tyler enjoyed more success in foreign relations. In August 1842 Webster concluded the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain that settled boundary disputes between the United States and British colonies along the Maine and Great Lakes borders. In April 1844 the administration negotiated a treaty of annexation with Texas, but because of Tyler's poor relations with both parties and Secretary of State John C. Calhoun's linking of slavery to the annexation, the Senate rejected the treaty in June. Spurned by Whigs and Democrats, Tyler did not run for president in 1844. Late in February 1845 Congress passed a joint resolution to annex Texas, which Tyler signed several days before the end of his presidency on March 4, 1845.

Julia Gardiner Tyler

Tyler's wife suffered a debilitating stroke before he became president and did not participate in White House functions. She suffered a second stroke and died on September 10, 1842. She was buried in the cemetery at Cedar Grove plantation, her birthplace in New Kent County. On June 26, 1844, in New York City, Tyler married twenty-three-year-old Julia Gardiner, a member of a prominent New York family. Their two daughters and five sons included David Gardiner Tyler, who served two terms in the House of Representatives, and Lyon Gardiner Tyler, a historian and president of the College of William and Mary. After he left the presidency, Tyler and his new wife moved to Sherwood Forest, the Charles City County plantation he had purchased several years earlier.

The Sectional Crisis

Lincoln Campaign Button

Although not in office during the next decade and a half, Tyler publicly commented on the issues that divided the country. Insisting that the differences about slavery could be remedied by spreading the institution to the West and steadfastly maintaining state sovereignty, he condemned the proposed Wilmot Proviso to place restrictions on slavery in the territory acquired from Mexico, supported the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and believed that the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which prohibited Congress from forbidding slavery in the territories, proved his position correct. As the sectional crisis intensified following Abraham Lincoln's election as president in November 1860 and the subsequent secession of seven lower South states, Tyler wanted to keep the Union together but not at the expense of states' rights. Arguing that Virginia's place was with the other slave states, he insisted that Virginia move quickly on secession and take a leadership role in a Southern confederacy, a sovereign country that could subsequently enter into commercial and defensive alliances with the United States. Not giving up on reconciliation, however, he proposed a conference of slave and free border states to seek a solution to the crisis that would be acceptable to both sides.

The Peace Conference and the Convention of 1861

In January 1861 the General Assembly sponsored such a conference and invited all states to send representatives. It elected five delegates from Virginia, including Tyler. Fourteen free states and seven slave states that had not seceded sent delegates to the conference, which opened in Washington, D.C., on February 4. Believing that a sectional reconciliation plan from the conference would be his life's crowning achievement, Tyler served as president of what became known as the Peace Conference, but in spite of his leadership role he argued that the convention's final resolutions, written by the free state delegates, did not protect the rights of slave owners in the territories and would do little to bring back the lower South and restore the Union. He voted against the conference's seven resolutions, which the conference sent to Congress for approval late in February 1861 as an amendment to the Constitution. Early the following month it failed in the United States Senate and never came to a vote in the House of Representatives.

On the same day that the Peace Conference began, voters in Charles City, James City, and New Kent counties elected Tyler to the state convention that met first on February 13 to act for Virginia during the secession crisis. In mid-March he spoke forcefully and at length against the Peace Conference resolutions, and on April 4 he voted for secession when the convention rejected it. In a speech four days later Tyler insisted that Lincoln should reveal his policy for dealing with the seceded states and warn them if he planned to reunite the Union by force. Attempting to find a legislative compromise for the sectional crisis, Tyler proposed on April 13 that the convention consider an amendment to the federal Constitution calling for the formation of two classes of the Senate, one consisting of representatives from slaveholding states and one from nonslaveholding states. Any law or appointment confirmation would require the assent of both classes, thus restoring what he believed to be the representative balance of concurrent majorities in the Senate. The convention rejected Tyler's proposal.

Death Mask of John Tyler

On April 17, following the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops, Tyler voted with the majority for secession. He headed a committee that negotiated the terms for Virginia's entry into the Confederate States of America and helped set the pay rate for military officers. On June 14, Tyler signed the Ordinance of Secession, and one week later the convention unanimously elected him to the Provisional Confederate Congress. In November 1861 he won election to the Confederate House of Representatives that was scheduled to sit for the first time the following February. Tyler died in his room at the Ballard House hotel in Richmond on January 18, 1862, before he could take his seat. He was buried in that city's Hollywood Cemetery.

TIMELINE

March 29, 1790

John Tyler is born at Greenway, his family's plantation in Charles City County. He is the son of John Tyler and Mary Armistead Tyler.

1802

John Tyler enters the preparatory department of the College of William and Mary.

1807

John Tyler completes his studies at the College of William and Mary and goes on to read law with his father.

1809

John Tyler is admitted to the Virginia bar.

December 1811

John Tyler begins serving the first of five consecutive one-year terms representing Charles City County in the House of Delegates.

March 29, 1813

John Tyler and Letitia Christian marry. They will have three sons and five daughters, one of whom will die at birth.

December 8, 1815

The General Assembly elects John Tyler to the Council of State.

November 1816

John Tyler wins a special election to a vacant seat in the House of Representatives from the district that includes the city of Richmond and Charles City, Hanover, Henrico, and New Kent counties.

1817

John Tyler wins election to the House of Representatives from the district that includes the city of Richmond and Charles City, Hanover, Henrico, and New Kent counties.

1819

John Tyler wins reelection to the House of Representatives from the district that includes the city of Richmond and Charles City, Hanover, Henrico, and New Kent counties.

1823

John Tyler wins election to the House of Delegates representing Charles City County. He will serve three consecutive one-year terms.

December 10, 1825

The General Assembly elects John Tyler to a one-year term as governor.

December 1826

The General Assembly reelects John Tyler to a one-year term as governor.

January 13, 1827

The General Assembly elects the sitting governor, John Tyler, to the U.S. Senate.

March 4, 1827

John Tyler's resignation as governor takes effect. He begins his term in the U.S. Senate.

October 5, 1829—January 15, 1830

John Tyler serves as a delegate to a constitutional convention meeting in Richmond. He is one of four delegates representing Richmond and Williamsburg and the counties of Charles City, Elizabeth City, James City, Henrico, New Kent, Warwick, and York.

January 14, 1830

John Tyler votes with the majority of delegates for the revised state constitution.

February 15, 1833

The General Assembly reelects John Tyler to the U.S. Senate.

1836

John Tyler runs for vice president on an unsuccessful Whig ticket with Tennessee senator Hugh Lawson White. He receives forty-seven electoral votes.

February 1836

John Tyler resigns from the U.S. Senate rather than obey the General Assembly's instructions to introduce and vote for a resolution to expunge an 1834 senatorial censure of President Andrew Jackson.

January 1839

John Tyler returns to the House of Delegates representing Williamsburg and James City and York counties.

Late 1839

John Tyler becomes the compromise nominee of the Whig Party for vice president on the ticket with William Henry Harrison.

November 1840

The Whig Party candidates William Henry Harrison and John Tyler are elected U.S. president and vice president, defeating the incumbent Democrat Martin Van Buren 234 electoral votes to 60. Van Buren did not have a consensus running mate.

March 4, 1841

William Henry Harrison is inaugurated president of the United States.

April 4, 1841

President William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia several weeks after taking office. His vice president, John Tyler, assumes the office of president. He is the youngest man to hold the office to date and the first vice president to assume office after a president's death.

September 1841

All the members of President John Tyler's cabinet except Secretary of State Daniel Webster resign in protest of his policies, which do not closely align with the Whig Party.

August 1842

Members of the Whig Party, furious at President John Tyler for veering from the party's principles, begin speaking of impeachment.

August 1842

Secretary of State Daniel Webster concludes the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain that settles boundary disputes between the United States and British colonies along the Maine and Great Lakes borders.

September 10, 1842

Letitia Christian Tyler, wife of President John Tyler, suffers a stroke and dies.

January 1843

Virginia congressman John Minor Botts introduces an unsuccessful impeachment resolution aimed at President John Tyler, whose policies have veered far from the Whig Party line.

April 1844

The administration of President John Tyler negotiates a treaty of annexation with Texas.

June 1844

The U.S. Senate rejects a treaty of annexation with Texas. It does so in part because of President John Tyler's poor relations with members of both the Whig and Democratic parties and Secretary of State John C. Calhoun's linking of slavery to the annexation.

June 26, 1844

President John Tyler marries twenty-three-year-old Julia Gardiner in New York City. The will have two daughters and five sons.

February 1845

Congress passes a joint resolution to annex Texas.

March 4, 1845

President John Tyler signs a joint resolution of Congress to annex Texas.

January 1861

The General Assembly invites all states to send representatives to a peace conference. It elects five delegates from Virginia.

February 4, 1861

Delegates are elected to the Virginia Convention, to convene in Richmond, to consider the constitutional crisis triggered by the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president and the secession of Deep South states.

February 4, 1861

Delegates from fourteen free states and seven slave states that have not seceded convene a peace conference in Washington, D.C. John Tyler serves as president.

Late February 1861

Delegates of the Peace Conference in Washington, D.C., send their proposals to Congress for approval as an amendment to the Constitution.

Early March 1861

Proposals from delegates of the Peace Conference in Washington, D.C., sent to Congress for approval as an amendment to the Constitution, fail in the Senate.

Mid-March 1861

John Tyler, a delegate to the Virginia Convention, speaks forcefully and at length against the Peace Conference resolutions, designed to find a way out of the sectional crisis. Tyler serves as president of the Peace Conference, whose delegates met in Washington, D.C.

April 4, 1861

John Tyler, a delegate to the Virginia Convention, votes for secession. The motion is defeated 45 votes to 90.

April 8, 1861

In a speech to the Virginia Convention, John Tyler insists that President Abraham Lincoln should reveal his policy for dealing with the seceded states and warn them if he planned to reunite the Union by force.

April 13, 1861

John Tyler proposes that the Virginia convention consider an amendment to the federal Constitution calling for the formation of two classes of the Senate, one consisting of representatives from slaveholding states and one from nonslaveholding states.

April 17, 1861

John Tyler, a delegate to the Virginia Convention, votes for secession. The motion passes by a vote of 88 to 55.

June 14, 1861

John Tyler signs the Ordinance of Secession.

June 21, 1861

The Virginia Convention unanimously elects John Tyler to the Provisional Confederate Congress.

November 1861

John Tyler wins election to the Confederate House of Representatives that is scheduled to sit for the first time in February 1862.

January 18, 1862

John Tyler dies in his room at the Ballard House hotel in Richmond. He is buried in that city's Hollywood Cemetery.