John Tyler

Growing Up in Virginia

John Tyler entered history because he faced a question no American leader had answered before: what should happen when a president dies in office? His answer came after a long political career. Tyler was born on March 29, 1790, at Greenway, his family's plantation in Charles City County, Virginia. His father was a planter, judge, and later governor. The family's wealth depended in part on the labor of enslaved people, a system Tyler would continue to support throughout his life.

At 12, Tyler entered the preparatory branch of the College of William & Mary. He moved into its college program three years later, graduated in 1807, and studied law. He joined the Virginia bar in 1809. This education prepared him for public office, but the rights and opportunities he enjoyed were not shared by the people held in slavery on his family's land.

From State Office to the National Stage

Tyler won election to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1811, when he was 21. He later served in the U.S. House of Representatives, became governor of Virginia in 1825, and entered the U.S. Senate in 1827. He argued for states' rights and limited federal power. In practice, those views often defended the political strength of slaveholding states.

Tyler began as a Democrat but broke with President Andrew Jackson and joined the Whig Party. In 1840, the Whigs chose him as William Henry Harrison's running mate, partly to attract Southern voters. Their campaign slogan was “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.” Harrison and Tyler won, and Tyler became vice president on March 4, 1841.

The First Unexpected Succession

President Harrison died on April 4, only one month after taking office. The Constitution did not clearly say whether Tyler became the president or merely performed the president's duties. Tyler insisted that he held the full office. He took the presidential oath on April 6 and acted as the nation's tenth president, not as an “acting president.” Congress eventually accepted his position, creating a precedent followed after later presidential deaths. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment made this rule explicit in 1967.

Tyler soon clashed with the Whig leaders who had helped elect him. He vetoed bills to create a new national bank, most of Harrison's cabinet resigned, and the Whigs expelled him from the party. His administration still completed the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842, settling parts of the boundary between the United States and British North America.

Expansion, Division, and a Mixed Legacy

Near the end of his term, Tyler pushed to annex the Republic of Texas. A treaty failed in the Senate, so Congress used a joint resolution instead. Tyler signed it on March 1, 1845, three days before leaving office; Texas entered the United States later that year. Annexation expanded the country, but it also widened the struggle over slavery and worsened tensions with Mexico that led to war under President James K. Polk.

Tyler returned to Virginia. When the nation split in 1861, he supported Virginia's secession and won election to the Confederate House of Representatives. He died on January 18, 1862, before taking that seat. Tyler's wider legacy must hold two truths together: his firm claim to the presidency gave the country a durable succession rule, while his defense of slavery, expansion, and secession helped deepen injustices and divisions that led toward the Civil War.