John Tyler

John Tyler was born in Virginia in 1790 and built his career as a states’ rights politician, congressman, governor, senator, and vice president. Though elected on the Whig ticket with William Henry Harrison in 1840, Tyler had long held constitutional views closer to old Jeffersonian and states’ rights traditions. When Harrison died after only thirty-one days in office, Tyler asserted that he became the full president, establishing a crucial succession precedent.

Tyler quickly broke with the Whig Party. He vetoed major Whig banking legislation supported by Henry Clay, arguing that a new national bank was unconstitutional. Furious Whigs expelled him from the party, leaving him politically isolated. Most of his cabinet resigned, and he governed without a stable party base.

Despite political isolation, Tyler pursued an active foreign policy. His administration settled boundary tensions with Britain through the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, which clarified parts of the U.S.-Canada border and addressed other disputes. He also supported expansion into the Pacific and strengthened American interest in trade with Asia.

Tyler’s defining goal became the annexation of Texas, a slaveholding republic whose admission threatened to intensify sectional conflict and risk war with Mexico. After the Senate rejected an annexation treaty, Tyler pushed annexation through by joint resolution, signed shortly before he left office. He retired to his Virginia estate, Sherwood Forest, where he lived until his death in 1862, having established the crucial constitutional precedent of full presidential succession that would guide the republic for generations.