President:John Tyler
www.americancorner.org.tw | 2012-10-17 12:42
 
John Tyler, 10th president of the United States, was called "His Accidency" by his foes because he was the first president to get the job without being elected to it. He took the helm when President Harrison died after only one month in office.
 
Tyler had other "firsts" as president: His first wife was the first wife to die while her husband was still president, and he was the first president to marry while in office.
 
Tyler was the last of the Virginia aristocrats in the White House. He was a Southerner until his death, even being elected to the Confederate Congress after unsuccessfully trying to keep the Union from dissolving and entering the Civil War. He was the only president who also allied himself with the Confederacy.
 
Tyler, His Family and His Allegiance to the South
 
Tyler was the last of the Virginia aristocratic tobacco-planting elite to occupy the White House and was the last of the 19th century presidents to be raised in Virginia. His family traced its roots in the "Old Dominion" (Virginia's nickname) back to the 1650s. His father owned more than 1,000 acres of tobacco fields and many slaves as well.
 
Tyler's father served as governor of Virginia (as did John Tyler, in 1825-27) and was close to Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the "Virginia dynasty," or ruling class. John Tyler was one of eight children. What did John Tyler do in 1809, the year his father became governor of Virginia?
 
John Tyler was admitted to the Virginia Bar in 1809 (allowing him to practice law). In 1813, he married Letitia Christian, who was also from a ruling family in Virginia. They had seven children who survived infancy (two others did not). Letitia suffered a stroke that severely weakened her before her husband became president. She died in 1842, shortly before her 52nd birthday.
Five months later, Tyler began courting Julia Gardiner, who was 22 (he was 52) and from a prominent New York family. They married in 1844 and had seven children together, the last when Tyler was 70 years old. Their last surviving child lived into the Truman administration of 1945-1953, amazing for a president who was born during George Washington's presidency!
Julia started the custom of having "Hail to the Chief" play when the president enters official gatherings. In 1845, Tyler and his wife retired to his Virginia plantation and the Old Dominion aristocracy, a world that was quickly fading. How do you think Tyler's background influenced his political career?
 
Tyler was a Southerner to his core, and was highly loyal to Virginia. He developed his political career around the narrow interests of the Southern slave-owning planters who also valued states' rights. He was a slave owner himself (he had about 70 slaves) and opposed efforts to open political participation to men without property.
 
Representing Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives, Tyler opposed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed Missouri to be admitted as a slave state only if Maine were admitted as a free state. Tyler opposed placing geographical restrictions on the spread of slavery, seeing them as an abuse of federal power. Afterward, he resigned in discouragement from the House. He once said that "the Southern states are in constant apprehension [anxiety about the future] lest the national government should be converted into a mere majority machine."
 
When Tyler became president in 1841, his administration (and his limited Southern beliefs) strengthened the division in America that led to the Civil War. By the time he left office, Tyler's Cabinet secretaries were all Southern conservatives, men who ultimately returned to the Democratic Party from the Whigs.
 
By the time of the Civil War, the Democrats had become identified with planter interests, states' rights and slavery. Despite his conservative views, Tyler was strongly against the Civil War and wanted to preserve the Union. He tried avoiding conflict by chairing a "Peace Convention" involving Northern and Southern states' representatives. The conference failed, however, and Tyler became a supporter of Southern secession, serving as a delegate to the Virginia Secession Convention.
 
After Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, Tyler was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, but he died in Richmond, Virginia, on Jan. 18, 1862, just days before its first meeting. John Tyler was the only president who also served in the Confederacy.
 
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