John Tyler

• Vice President to:       General William Henry Harrison - Whig, from Ohio.
  
  
  • William Henry Harrison served from March - April, 1841. He died in 1841, 4 weeks after being inaugurated President, at the age of 68.
    
    
• Dates Served: Tyler served as Vice President from March - April 1841, then as President till 1845.
  
• Political Party: Tyler was a Whig, from Virginia.
  
• Born: 1790.
  
• Died: 1862, at the age of 72.
  
• The presidential opponent during the 1840 campaign was:
  
  
  • Martin Van Buren - Democrat - Incumbant President
    
    
• Campaign issues in 1840:
  
  
  • The issue this year was how much everyone didn't like President Van Buren. The Panic of 1837 had produced an economic depression and Van Buren never gave any clear answer as to how he would alleviate it. William Henry Harrison had fought in several Indian wars years ealier and the Whig party managed to use the story of one of these battles, in Tippecanoe, Indiana, as a gimmick to market Harrison as a war hero, just like Jackson. The battle at Tippecanoe was relatively minor, as far as wars go, but it was magnified as a glorious victory and immortalized in the first officially sanctioned Presidential campaign slogan, "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!". Political parties had discovered the power of Marketing, and they milked it for all it was worth in the form of campaign slogans, campaign songs, and campaign publicity stunts as tools to mold their candidate as a product in the Party's own image. The Whigs managed to run Harrison as a born-in-a-log-cabin common man, against the elitist Van Buren, even though Harrison had been raised in a wealthy estate. But people flocked to the image, not the man, and Harrison won despite being just as unclear as Van Buren was as to how he would improve the economy.
    
    
  
  
• Notable Facts about John Tyler:
  
  
  • John Tyler was a busy man, fathering 15 children (8 by his first wife, 7 by his second wife), more than any other Vice President or President. His youngest child was born when he was 70.
    
    
  • Tyler was born during George Washington's term in office, and the youngest of his children lived to see the Truman administration.
    
    
  • Tyler was a great-great-great uncle of Harry S. Truman.
    
    
  • Religious affiliation: Tyler was a member of the Episcopalian Church, though his religious outlook was generally Deist. His views of religious doctrine were similar to Jefferson's and he adamantly believed that political issues had no business being preached from the pulpit, including such sensitive issues as slavery.
    
    
  • A lawyer, he began his political career by serving in the Virginia State Legislature from 1811 - 1816, then served in the US House of Representatives, representing Virginia from 1816 - 1821, then served in the Virginia State Legislature again from 1838 - 1840.
    
    
  • During the Whig nominating Convention in 1840, Tyler supported Henry Clay, not the eventual winner William Henry Harrison. He was nominated to the post of Vice President anyway, to gain Southern support.
    
    
  • Tyler was the first Vice President to move from the little chair to the big chair as a result of the death of the President, which happened a mere 4 weeks after inauguration. But Tyler was not kept informed of the President's failing health, only hearing of his death on the morning after President Harrison had died. He didn't even know he was sick.
    
    
  • During his term as President, Tyler became the first Chief Executive to get married while in office, when he (age 54) married his second wife, Julia Gardiner (age 24) in 1844. Tyler's first wife had died of a stroke 2 years earlier.
    
    
  • Tyler's second wife started the tradition of playing "Hail to the Chief" whenever the President appears in public.
    
    
  • After the end of his term, in 1845, Tyler moved to Virginia to live on his plantation. In 1859 he was appointed Chancellor of the College of William and Mary, in 1859.
    
    
  • In February of 1861 he served as Chairman of the Washington Peace Conference that had convened to try and avert Civil War, but it obviously failed.
    
    
  • When Virginia seceded from the Union Tyler served in the new Confederate Congress, being elected to it's version of the House of Representatives. However, he died in Richmond on Jan 18, 1862, prior to taking his oath of office.
    
    
  • When John Tyler died he was buried without any official state funeral, the only Vice President or President to be so excluded. Since he died during the Civil War, serving the Confederate government, he wasn't in a position to be formally buried by the enemy government up north. At his request, he was buried with a Confederate flag wrapped around his coffin, a martyr for the Southern cause. He was buried in a grave next to the tomb of former President James Monroe, another native Virginian.
    
    In the North, Tyler was considered a traitor for having joined the Confederacy, the only living ex-President to join the new Confederate government. His death was ignored in Washington DC. However in 1915, 48 years later, the US Congress erected a small memorial over his burial plot.
    

Notable events during his Vice Presidency:

• On Inauguration Day, President Harrison gave a speech that lasted a painful one hour and 40 minutes. He did this on a cold and windy day, without wearing any coat, gloves, or hat. Later that evening he took a walk outside and got caught in a downpour of rain, and came back to the White House drenched like a wet cat. He soon caught a cold which quickly developed into pneumonia. He died 4 weeks later.
  
  
• Death of the President. Harrison spent exactly 4 weeks in office, from March 4 - April 4. He spent most of this time fending off the crowds of office seekers who always packed the White House after every election. His only real action during this time was to proclaim that office holders should be removed only in the event of dereliction of duty.
  
  

Notable events during his completion of Harrison's Presidential term:

• The Question of Right of Succession. When President Harrison died there were some members of Congress who argued that John Tyler was to be considered the acting president, and not the real president, since the Constitution was not specific regarding the right of succession in the event of the death of the President. It was argued that the VP was to assume the duties of the Presidency, but not the office itself. Tyler disagreed and considered himself the true and legitimate President, and even refused to open any mail sent to him addressed to the "acting president". His view eventually won and he was soon accepted as the legitimate president.
  
  
• The Mass Cabinet Resignation, in 1841. Whig Congressmen, from Tyler's own party, passed two separate bills to re-establish the national bank that Andrew Jackson had dissolved 9 years earlier, but President Tyler vetoed both of them. In revolt, his entire Cabinet resigned in protest over his abandonment of one of his own party's central campaign agendas. He was left a President without a party.
  
  
• The Webster-Ashburton Treaty, in 1842, with Britain that formally resolved the border dispute between Maine and New Brunswick. The treaty defined the entire border with Canada from eastern Maine to the Rockies. The US relinquished 5,000 square miles of the disputed land in Maine and held on to 7,000 square miles. After the treaty, the only part of the US/Canadian map left to be resolved was the Oregon territory, which would be resolved 4 years later.
  
  
• Treaty of Wanghia, in 1844, which established formal trade relations with China for the first time.
  
  
• Annexation of Texas, in 1844. Three days prior to the end of his term, Tyler signed legislation that accepted the annexation of Texas into the Union, with the Missouri Compromise border at 36¡30' running through the new state.
  
  
• Florida was admitted to the Union in 1845.