American History Hit - President John Tyler: The 'Accidental' President

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

He may have been the tenth President, but John Tyler - 'His Accidency' - was a pioneer in many ways.Tyler was the first Vice President to assume the position of commander-in-chief on the death of their running mate, the first President to be kicked out of their own political party, and the only President to renounce their US citizenship.Don is joined by Dr Christopher Leahy from Keuka College to explore the presidency of John Tyler. Chris' book, ‘President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler’, is the first full biography of John Tyler in more than 50 years.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORYHIT1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's nearly daybreak on the morning of April 5, 1841. The stars still shine in the dark sky.

Two riders gallop their horses up a long drive and dismount at a house in Williamsburg, Virginia. Despite the early hour, they rap loudly on the front door. Theirs is an important and urgent mission. And these are no ordinary messengers. One is the doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate, and the other, the son of the U.S. Secretary of State. At first, there is no response. They pound again harder. At last, a reply is heard inside and the door opens.

A moment later, standing before them, is John Tyler, vice president of the United States. Inviting the men inside, Tyler is handed a letter. It reads, Sir, it has become our painful duty to inform you that William Henry Harrison, late president of the United States, has departed this life.

This distressing event took place this day at the president's mansion in this city at 30 minutes before one in the morning. We lose no time in dispatching the chief clerk in the State Department as a special messenger to bear you these melancholy tidings. We have the honor to be with the highest regard, your obedient servants. The vice president receives this unfortunate news with solemnity, grace, and undoubtedly shock. Never before has an American president perished while in office.

But John Tyler will answer this unprecedented call in his own fashion, forever shaping his destiny and that of the nation. In view of the fact, well about you by history, that the tendency of all human institutions is to concentrate power in the hands of a single man, and that their ultimate downfall has proceeded from this cause, I deem it of the most essential importance that a complete separation should take place between the sword and the purse. Hello listeners, Don Wildman here. This is American History Hit with another episode in our bimonthly, every two-week presidential series.

As we now enter the sixth decade since the Declaration of Independence, we've reached Chief Executive No. 10. Finally, in double digits, when John Tyler takes the highest office in the land from 1841, 1845. His Accidency, some called him then. Great nickname. Referring to the fact that Tyler was the first U.S. vice president to assume the presidency after the president he served died in office. Number nine, William Henry Harrison, as you may recall. In 1841, spent a mere month as the commander in chief only to perish from pneumonia,

or so says the folklore. More likely, he died from the toxic conditions in Washington. And I don't mean the politics. recommend our William Henry Harrison episode two weeks back wherever you find your podcasts. 1841 to 1845. Rather nebulous period for many Americans, so many places to hang your hat historically. We're growing the nation, expanding ever westward, dealing with the practical realities of that growth, as well as the painfully moral ones, contending with the institution of slavery and the rising abolition movement, the moving of indigenous nations from their ancestral lands, the domestic dilemmas of manifest destiny.

This in-between era finds an almost Dickensian character in John Tyler, a man who made his political hay as an in-between politician. Not that he misrepresented himself. Tyler was utterly clear on his conservative agenda. But his eventual ascendancy to the White House was enabled by the intricate politics of the day, the maneuvering necessary to get presidents, or in Tyler's case, vice presidents, elected. in what would be an increasingly fractured country, the Tyler White House would stand on ground riven with cultural and political fault lines.

So much for the era of good feelings just a few decades before. It's a fascinating and illuminating story, bit of a roller coaster ride. And we have with us Christopher Leahy, a professor at Cuka College here in New York State, author of President Without a Party, the Life of John Tyler, the first full biography of John Tyler in more than 50 years. Hi, Chris, welcome to American History Hip. Hi, Don. Thank you very much for having me. Chris, I was not prepared for the tantalizing story. That is John Tyler's presidency. A big part of the story is the way that it begins.

When Harrison suddenly died, the founders hadn't really explained clearly what the next steps were. Explain the way this went down for Tyler. Well, Tyler was actually at his home in Williamsburg, Virginia. Congress was not in session when Harrison came into office in March of 1841. So Tyler took the oath of office. as the vice president and then promptly returned home to Virginia. He had had some notification about a week before Harrison's death that Harrison was very ill. So it wasn't completely taken by surprise, but they had to send two messengers down to Williamsburg to literally knock on his door in the

middle of the night and inform him that Harrison had died and that he would have to come to Washington to assume the role of the president. As you mentioned, the Constitution was a little bit vague on exactly what that meant. There were some people who thought that Tyler should consider himself an acting president or an interim president, not really defining what exactly that meant. Tyler, however, came to Washington, insisted on being given the oath of office, insisted on taking the oath of office, and made clear that he intended to be the president with all the responsibilities and all the rights. I'm not sure I understand the difference between that. As many times I read the passages that I did, the differences between the acting president and becoming president. How does that split?

Yeah, there really is no difference. I mean, it's a semantic difference. And I think the people who insisted that Tyler should serve as an acting president were mostly Whigs, who wanted to make sure that he abided by their domestic policy. Tyler really saw no ambiguity. He believed that once Harrison had died, that he became the president in full. And, you know, the Tyler precedent, whereby the incoming president takes the oath of office was established that morning, April 5th, 1841 in Brown's Indian Queen Hotel in Washington. So you're telling me the Constitution doesn't have that simple fact in it that when the president dies in office, the vice president just becomes president?

I thought that was pretty clear. Yeah, well, I think the people who wanted Tyler to behave as an acting president were the wigs who hoped he would just basically assume their agenda and make sure that he rubber stamped their agenda. But Tyler established a precedent that a lot of people know. There's a very famous photograph of Lyndon Johnson after John F. Kennedy's assassination taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One. And that particular episode would not have been possible without the Tyler precedent of taking the oath of office and insisting that once Harrison died, he actually assumed a presidency in full. There was no ambiguity for Tyler, even if some people had maybe begrudged him,

the title of president. We're going to talk a lot about these political machinations that, well, that are peculiar to his presidency. But this sounds like it's part of that. I mean, he had become a wig, as we will soon discuss, in sort of reaction to Andrew Jackson, who he had previously supported. And all of the Whig cabinet that is under Harrison expects that he will take up that agenda. But that's not going to be the case. That is correct. In fact, the very first day that Tyler met the cabinet on April 5th, 1841 in Washington, Daniel Webster, who was Secretary of State, informed Tyler that while Harrison was president, the cabinet had basically acted as the, even more than the advisors that Harrison was more or less a, you know, one among equals.

And Tyler cut him off rather abruptly and said, you know, you have to understand that this is my presidency. You can resign if you don't want to abide by that, but I will be happy to keep you on if you can, you know, deal with that. can really attribute that moment, that oath of office we all expect will happen to John Tyler. Yes. I think so, yes. And immediacy. He was really the last of the Virginia planter aristocracy, and the very, he was a very definition of American elite. Owned a plantation with large number of enslaved persons. He believed in the notion of an agricultural Jeffersonian Republic. And the common people, those masses needed to be ruled by a privileged minority. Is that a fair characterization of the man?

Yeah, I think so. In fact, the working title of my book, before it became president without a party, was last of the Virginia dynasty. And that was part of the theme of that, that he was really the last, almost of a dying breed of Jeffersonian Virginia politician. I mean, his father, Judge Tyler, was actually Thomas Jefferson's college roommate at William and Mary College. I find that so interesting. But as a result, he was a strict constructionist, meaning the Constitution as written, we still hear about this, Antonio Scalia, all those guys, that's the idea that Tyler abides by, that there is nothing more and nothing less to this country than that which is in the Constitution. As little federal government as possible,

states rights primary, that's John Tyler. That is correct, yes. He enters politics as a U.S. representative. We'll cover this sort of past of his very quickly here because we like to concentrate on the presidential years. He's a U.S. representative from Virginia, 1860, becomes governor of Virginia, serves as U.S. Senator till 1836, steps into John Randolph's seat.

I mean, these are the names of the founding of this nation. He then becomes VP for William Henry Harrison's campaign in the election of 1841. Tell me about the circumstances behind Tyler becoming Harrison's VP. This is the machinery in gear, right? Right. Well, the Wigs had held their first ever nominating convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in December of 1833. So almost a year before the actual election, they got together. And Tyler actually attended the convention. And the standard behavior for that day was that, you know, we're very early on in the process of nominating conventions, but usually the nomination was bestowed upon someone and then they would, you know, receive the message that they had earned the nomination.

Tyler actually went to Harrisburg and I argue that I think in the parlance of the day, he said he was available for the nomination of vice president. There were a lot of people who didn't want it. A lot of people recognized that in the days of the early republic, Secretary of State was the position that most likely catapulted you into the front rank of candidates for president. Tyler actually wanted the vice presidency and showed up in Harrisburg, and I think that played a large role in him getting it after others didn't want it. Yeah, and it wasn't a popular thing to be. I mean, even today, it has its detractors. So what was his motivation? What he was. he see is the reason to be that? Well, I think he wanted to remain in politics, as you alluded to,

he had held every previous elected office possible. And I think he wanted to remain in politics, wanted to remain relevant somehow, even if it meant being second fiddle to Harrison. And I think, you know, obviously he probably knew subconsciously knew something that nobody else did. Harrison ran previously and lost to Martin Van Buren in 1836. Tyler had tried to be be vice president then and was sort of forced out, right? He did not run on that ticket. Well, in 1836, the Wigs ran regional candidates for president. They didn't focus on one individual. So they had, you know, a northern, a southern, a Western candidate. Tyler was in that mix as loosely the vice president, presidential nominee. But the Wigs obviously decided in 1840 to run one single

candidate against Van Buren as he's running for reelection. There's a theme. I'm sort of detecting the of something here that will run throughout this. He is a contrarian. Is that fair to say? I mean, he pushes a lot of people's buttons the wrong way. I think that's probably a fair way to put it, yes. Okay, good. A lot of his own political identity is in itself a reaction to others, I mean, especially to Andrew Jackson. Jackson's two terms as president, during Tyler's time in the Senate, he was appalled by the guy. He was, you know, everything at Jackson was doing in the White House, the liberties he began taking with presidential power, it pushes Tyler to split off from him and create along in the company of Henry Clay, John Calhoun, Daniel Webster, the whole Whig party.

Generally speaking, what do the Whigs and John Tyler seek to accomplish by this? Well, the Whigs first and foremost were found that as an anti-Jackson party. Jackson had been very aggressive against the nullifiers in South Carolina. He had removed the deposits from the United States Bank in an effort to kill the bank, which succeeded ultimately. And the Whigs coalesced as an anti-Jackson party, but they were dedicated to a more nationalistic view of the federal government. You mentioned Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. They believed in a stronger federal government, particularly as it pertained to the economy, obviously things that Tyler in his history, in his past history, did not support. and that really forms the basis for the clash between the Whig Party, the General Wig Party and Tyler once he becomes president.

Well, this is what's so interesting. That's why I call him the end-between president. He's riding the lines so intricately throughout these different factions. I hope from the conversation I will understand this man why he wanted to be this sort of person. But it's a very difficult way to play your politics. I mentioned in an 1836 election he vied to be vice president. He falls short. Tyler has to wait until 1840, and they do it all again. This time on the slogan, Tippecanoo and Tyler 2, Tipa Canoe, referring to the battle that William Henry Harrison won, ostensibly. So Tippecanoe and Tyler 2 is a campaign against the whole Van Buren machine, against this

terrible economy that Van Buren was carrying throughout this entire presidency. They win, and then the unthinkable happens. One month later, it's President John Tyler. youngest so far at 51. This National Bank situation is one of these circumstances of Tyler's outlook that really encapsulates what's interesting about him. On one hand, he completely supports Andrew Jackson and his view of the National Bank, but then he's a Whig politician in order to get himself the vice presidency.

In the midst of all of this, he then turns against Andrew Jackson. But what is emerging here is an understanding of the country as growing, as needing mechanisms that will support this new nation, this new identity. Infrastructure being one of them. That's really one of the Whigs policies, right, to fund this new roads and canals and so forth that the nation needs. Where does Tyler come down on that issue? Well, interestingly enough, Tyler adapted a little bit more to the Whig policies once he became president than people realize. He actually opposed the National Bank on constitutional grounds, but just as equally opposed what he thought was Andrew Jackson's abuse of power when he removed the funds,

removed the deposits from the bank. When Tyler becomes president, I think he genuinely believes that he has to serve as president for the entire country, is somewhat willing to give a little bit on some of the previous rigid strict construction views that he had held before. But the bank is really the central issue. I mean, the National Bank and Henry Clay in particular as a senator, the leader of the Whigs in Congress, really made the bank the centerpiece of the Whig domestic political agenda in the summer session. There was a special session called in the summer of 1841, and Clay's goal in that session was to reestablish or recharter a national bank, and that's

where the clash between he and Tyler came about. Yeah, so much happens in Tyler's presidency. In four years, it's hard to believe it's one term. I mean, it's incredible what a ride this is. in his second year of that term, he basically cans the National Bank. I mean, this is again, right, what happens? And in reaction to this, his entire Whig cabinet, that which came in with Harrison, resigns on him. He's left without a cabinet. He has to replace it.

He basically cobbles together a cabinet after the fact. Is that the right account of that? Yeah, well, he vetoed a bill to recharter the National Bank twice. Clay had instituted, you know, put together a bill. They sent it up to the White House, Tyler, vetoed it. They worked on it again thinking they had overcome all of his objections. They sent a second bank bill up to the White House after it passed both houses of Congress and Tyler vetoed it again. And after that second veto, which is actually still in the first special session of Congress,

so this is in late summer of 1841, his cabinet resigns except for Secretary of State Daniel Webster. So the cabinet resigns. Tyler is formally kicked out of the Whig party. They actually hold a ceremony on the Capitol grounds and formally drum John Tyler out of the Whig Party. At that point, he is the only president that has no party, right? That is correct. In the history of this nation, that's incredible. But he probably liked it that way. You know, he always sort of saw himself as the lone gun, right?

Well, when he bought his plantation to retire to in Virginia, he called it Sherwood Forest because his rationale was, well, I'm the Robin Hood of the Whig Party, and I may as well live up to that name. So I think he, I think on some level he did enjoy that. Yeah, I mean, there's a sense that this personality would enjoy being an obstructionist, would enjoy saying no to people that he did not believe in. But I'm going to come back to this several times, like it or not, about the man, he is true to himself. And that is a quality you either admire or despise, depending on your own position, but it is the truth about him. At some point, he gets an angry mob on the, on the lawn of the White House, burning him an effigy.

That is correct. Yeah. Guns were fired that day. Yes. After the second veto, so this would have been mid-August of 1841, around 2 o'clock in the morning, as you mentioned, they had a, you know, hanged him in effigy and, you know, we're banging on the gates of the White House. Really frightened his family. Yeah. I want to come back to the bank, and only to sort of button it up. We talk about it so much in this first half of the 19th century.

It is this constant in presidential politics. Who's for it? Who's against it? The center of that issue I have learned through these episodes is really the funding of this growing nation, the infrastructure necessary to fund it and defend it. You have to have roads. You have to have to have to have canals. You have to sort of develop this transportation, this new technology of communications once the telegraph comes into play. Forget about the railroad.

You know, there's all kinds of stuff coming in the 19th century that only the federal government. government they are learning can fund properly. Otherwise, you have different states vying for these central networks. The National Bank is the function of that. So it's really interesting when you end up with a John Tyler who just sort of thinks of his own world down there in Virginia and preserving that way of life and that kind of economy as pushing up against this new America. That's a really important thing that I have learned. I hope listeners are getting that too from these episodes as we go throughout the early 1800s. Yeah, I think that's definitely true.

And I think in some ways that's what really has nurtured this view that Tyler was a reactionary. So he's in a way really moving against or at least thwarting as best he can progress in that sense. But his point, I believe, would be, okay, yeah, you need this new developed nation, but you have to hold on to the purity of the republic. Or else, what was the point of the whole revolution? This is a guy that straddles that moment of sort of the American philosophy. His dad was right back there at the beginning of it all. He was born in 1790. He has a sense of what this nation was created for at first, but now it's sort of moving

in another direction. And he's one of those obstructionist characters that's going to push against it. Yes. Yeah, I think in some ways he remains wedded to the Jeffersonian ideology that has in some ways been surpassed. Yeah. But I think that's why people find this period of time kind of confusing. is that it's really two different kind of Americas that are developing,

or one that's sort of waning and one that is developing at the same time. And we take it so for granted that the 1800s was all about progress and all about the big inventions. And it wasn't until the later part of the 18th century. This period of time is really setting that stuff up. And then, of course, there's the Civil War, right, smack in the middle. In a midst of all this tumult, and I'm talking about the second year of the Spans presidency, 1842, his wife, mother of eight of his children,

dies of a stroke. Tyler's response to this personal tragedy is controversial. He starts dating, right? Yeah, well, not too long after, she died September 10th, 1842, and within a couple of months after that, he had met Julia Gardner from Long Island and really began a very ostentatious pursuit of her, really didn't seem to, it didn't seem to matter to him

what conventions might have been. And there were people who talked about this, who noticed it. Well, let's talk about the numbers here. He's 51. Is that right? 51 when this starts? Well, 52 in 1842, and Julia Gardner is 22. So there's a 30-year age difference between them. Even today, that would shock people. And it does, yes. Back then, oh, my lord. You know, plus he's just coming off. He's a widower. You know, you'd be thinking about this. But of course, 22, very famous socialite in D.C., very beautiful woman, apparently. They eventually do get married in June of 1844. The first presidential marriage in office? That is correct.

Have there been others since? I can't remember. Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland married another much younger woman when he was president, so he would have been the second. And then Woodrow Wilson, who was a widow where his wife died in office, married his second wife as well. So there have been a couple. These are the stories we forget. Julia Gardner's got an amazing story. I just want to briefly tell us what happened to her father.

Well, on February 28, 1844, John Tyler threw a party aboard the USS Princeton, which was the pride and joy of the U.S. Navy. It was a big warship. It had a new cannon, a newly engineered cannon called the peacemaker that was installed on board. The peacemaker, the joke was that the cannon was so formidable that the enemy would just surrender once they saw it. And Tyler held this party, invited Julia Gardner and her, father and her sister to the party. They had Dolly Madison there, lots of other dignitaries. It was a unseasonably warm day in Washington. It was a beautiful day for a party aboard the boat. And during a demonstration of the peacemaker, the cannon, it exploded backwards and one of the men killed was David Gardner, Julia Gardner's father. Oh, my Lord. So did their marriage take place after that or before that? After that, after that, yes. In fact, she remarked, she wrote in a letter that she saw Tyler differently. She had actually refused his proposal before that,

and then afterwards, you know, within a couple of months, accepted the proposal and said that she had felt differently about him or saw him differently after the death of her father. He was very tender towards her, very solicitous towards her family. Not that she wasn't attracted to him before, but I think the death of her father really crystallized in her how she felt about him. I see. Well, well, they go on. to have seven more children. He has seven more children by this woman. In the end, 15 children,

John Tyler, fathers, not to mention rumored to have had others through enslaved women. Speaking of slavery, let's talk about that in terms of Texas, in terms of the slavery question, and John Tyler, probably the biggest headline of his term, Tyler wishes to annex Texas, the Texas Republic. Another previous episodes of ours, 1836, the Texas fights for its independence, from that period into the 1840s, this is its own country, as far as the United States is concerned, and John Tyler wants to annex it, bring it into the union. This is a way of refocusing his presidency and set himself up for a stronger re-election or campaign anyway going into the next election. All this goes awry, am I'm right?

Well, both Jackson, President Jackson, and President Van Buren had formally recognized. they granted recognition to the Republic of Texas, diplomatic recognition, but they were not willing to get involved in the fray of annexation. And Tyler, as you just mentioned, sought a big signature legacy-type issue that he could frame a third-party candidacy around to succeed himself in 1844. That's really the impetus for the pursuit of the annexation of Texas. What's the difference between annexation and statehood? Well, once the territory or once the country of Texas, Republic of Texas would have been annexed into the union, then it would have ultimately started the process of becoming a state.

So it had to be annexed, formally annexed, before it could become a state. It wasn't a territory. This is a secretary of state issue. This is a how do you do a treaty? Correct. Bring this thing. And there's like a two-step process at least. John Calhoun was his new secretary of state after Daniel Webster resigned earlier.

He was a fervent pro-slavery southerner from South Carolina. So therefore, abolitionists were pitted against this idea, fearing Texas would become the newest slave state. Even Martin Van Buren gets involved. He's in the Senate, right, at that point? Well, no, Van Buren's retired. He will run for president eventually as a free soil candidate in 1848. But he's opposed to, not opposed to it in principle, but when he seeks the nomination in 1844, he is largely opposed to the annexation of Texas.

Right. As a political issue. When this is taken up by Congress, meaning indirectly, Martin Van Buren, right, they basically steal his fire. Texas is indeed brought in as a state rather than as an annexed country. How does that happen? Well, Tyler actually was able to pursue the annexation process through a joint resolution of Congress. John C. Calhoun had finished up the treaty that Tyler's previous Secretary of State, Abel Upshire, had been working on Upshur, had also been killed.

In fact, he was standing right next to David Gardner when the peacemaker exploded, so he was killed, and Tyler had to replace Upshur with John C. Calhoun. Everybody knew at that point that the issue of the annexation of Texas was about slavery, that slavery would be the central issue. Tyler had his treaty, had the treaty that John C. Calhoun, worked out with Texas to annex Texas, fail in the Senate. The Senate did not ratify the treaty, so Tyler had to essentially do an end run and bring Texas into the union via joint resolution, which only required a 51% majority in both houses. A treaty required two-thirds of the

Senate. So it's interesting that you have a longstanding states-right strict construction guy who now uses what many people thought was the constitutionally dubious measure of the joint resolution to bring Texas into the United States. By hook or by crook, he gets his Texas. Statehood is resolved on March 1st, 1845. Tyler would sign this whole deal three days before the end of his presidency. He wanted the credit and he got it. Yes, that's correct.

But it was a double-edged sword. It exacerbates the national tensions that will eventually steer us to Civil War 15 years later. Yes. Just to show him whose boss, Congress overrides a veto of a rather minor bill at the end of his presidency, the first congressional override of a presidential veto. That's correct. Boy, Congress and president. Boy, it all starts way back when, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. It really doesn't change. You have this struggle between, I guess that's the whole idea of the Constitution, of course, separation of powers, but you see how personality infuses

that whole structure with all kinds of different dynamics. Yeah, I think for the first year or so, Tyler's presidency, you could accurately state that the battle between Tyler and the Whigs was really a personality battle between Tyler and Clay, Henry Clay. And I think a lot of it was personal after a while. Personal. They just hated each other. Yeah, they got to be that way. I mean, this is the era where people, it comes to blows, literally. You know, Charles Sumner and all that, somebody gets caned on the floor of the Senate a few years later. The gloves were just off. Strange as it seems to us today in our polite society compared to this. When you hear about people being so vile in the news these days, the way we hear so much of, they may be hearkening back to this America, which sort of is nostalgic for, I suppose, right? Yeah, I think a lot of people have a misconception that back in this time period or even a little bit earlier, that politics was much nicer, that it was more genteel.

And I think you could look at this decade of the 1840s, particularly with Tyler's presidency. For that matter, you could go back to the 1790s and see some really, ugly politics. So I think people who long for this idealic notion of politics are largely looking at things through rose-colored glasses. Well, there are still many, many people that feel very strongly about states' rights versus federal. And to them, the federal government's a joke. You know, it shouldn't be as important as it is in our lives. And this was certainly true of John Tyler. You know, it was to be as small a part of American life as possible. And that was really the point. Yes. Yeah. And I think that at least up until he became president,

and adapted a little bit more than I think people realize that animated him. That belief in a small centralized government really animated everything he did, or at least he tried to use that as his political North Star. 1845, does he run for another presidential term or not? He comes to the realization well before the annexation of Texas that he is not going to be a viable third party candidate. They actually created a Tyler Party. They called it the Tyler Party.

He had flirted a little bit with the possibility, of trying to get the Democratic nomination in 1844, but the Democrats largely wanted nothing to do with him. He had abandoned them years earlier, and they regarded him as a traitor to their standard, realized that he would not be able to mount a third-party candidacy and gave it up. In the summer of 1844, he gave that up. Went back to his blandation. Eventually he will, yes, when he leaves office. So we have to now talk about Tyler's post-presidency and his participation with the Washington Peace Conference of February 1861. Now we're, well, 15 years later, we are at the precipice of civil war in America.

John Tyler would have been one of those elder statesmen, a former president, of course, and he would have been turned to for leadership in this crisis moment. How does he participate in what many people don't even realize happened today? 1861, we're talking about February of 1861, two months from the shots being fired at Fort Sumter. and there is actually a gathering called the Washington Peace Conference of 1861. It goes through several iterations, and John Tyler comes at the latter part of it, right? That is correct. John Tyler was one of the representatives who some people look to as perhaps representing the best chance for this situation. By this time, seven states had seceded from the Union.

So there was talk about what Tyler might be able to bring to the table. Tyler actually met President-elect Abraham Lincoln. It's notable that neither man was very impressed with the other. Tyler really thought he took the measure of Lincoln and saw a lot wanting. Lincoln was not very impressed with Tyler. So, you know, I would think that realistically, most people probably understood that the peace conference had very little chance of success. But for a brief period of time, Tyler was looked at as not necessarily the savior of the union, but somebody who might push that process along. Well, he was, of course, serving his greater vision, which was to protect the South and the rights of enslavers. That was what he saw wrong with all the proposals that were coming out of that conference. He becomes a member of the provisional Confederate Congress elected to the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861. These are the smaller steps in this gigantic process that we just gloss over when we first learn about the Civil War. But there were many, many steps towards this final conclusion, which is this nation wasn't going to work.

I didn't know before researching this that Tyler was a central figure in all of that. Yes. Quite literally, he, in effect, repudiated his oath of office as president of the United States to become a member of the Confederate Congress. He gives up being citizen. He's the only president that gave up his American citizenship at some point in his life. Pretty amazing legacy to have. He ends up heading up the effort for Virginia to join the Confederate States of America. He's elected to that Confederate Congress from August 1st, 1861 to 1862, and then he dies before taking the office.

Yes, he died in January of 1862, as you said, before he could actually take his seat in the actual Confederate Congress. And I think, you know, a lot of people don't realize this, but I think his decision to ally himself with the Confederate government really not only harmed himself, not only harmed his own legacy, but harmed the legacy of his wife. His wife, Julia Gardner Tyler, pursued a federal pension for years as a former first lady. And Tyler's connection to the Confederacy really worked against or really hampered that effort. Imagine she never got that pension. No, actually she did. They actually finally did vote for a pension for her, but it took a lot of lobbying on her part to get it. Boy, that's a very gracious thing, isn't it?

In the end, John Tyler goes down in history as the U.S. president who turned his back on the country he claimed to love. in favor of the Virginia, he apparently loved a whole lot more. Such would be the case for so many who flipped sides in 1861, but he's surely the only one who was president. Amazing story. I think your title, the title of the book, President Without a Party, is indeed the label that applies most to John Tyler, who I'm sure had the ego and personal capacity to handle that lonesome feeling of being a lone gun or wolf, I suppose. I think in some ways he almost took pride in that. Yeah, exactly. Well, thanks a lot. Professor Christopher Leahy teaches at Kyuka College in the Finger Lakes region of New York and is the author of President Without a Party. The Life of John Tyler is also co-authored with his wife, Reclamation of a First Lady, Julia Gardner-Tyler's pursuit of a federal government pension.

Chris, great to meet you. Great to speak with you. So interesting. Thank you, Don. I appreciate the time and look forward to hearing more of your episodes. Thanks very much. I hope you enjoyed this episode of American History Hit. Please remember to like, review, and subscribe. follow us wherever you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next time.