John Tyler: President without a Party
The year was 1841. No president had ever before died in workplace. And after that one did. Who would take over as president? The Constitution was surprisingly vague on this concern– up until Vice President John Tyler took a firm position. His actions changed the direction of American history. Jared Cohen, author of Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America, tells Tyler’s little-known story.
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Script:
A loud, persistent rapping woke United States Vice President John Tyler out of a sound sleep.
Dressed in his sleeping frock and a cloth hat, an irritated Tyler unlocked. Two young men stood before him.
One of them handed the Vice President a file.
Tyler broke the seal and read.
” My God, the President is dead.”
The president was William Henry Harrison. He had remained in workplace for only 31 days.
In America’s short history, this had never taken place before. And no one, consisting of the Vice President, was quite sure what to do.
It was April, 1841.
John Tyler, tall, thin, with an aquiline nose and regal bearing, was the quintessential southern gentleman. A long-time fixture in Virginia politics, he had actually served both as guv and senator. When Harrison, who was searching for somebody to support his Southern base, offered him the VP slot, Tyler felt task bound to accept.
The 2 guys rode to a simple triumph on the appealing slogan– among the most unforgettable in governmental politics– “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.” (” Tippecanoe” described Harrison’s 1811 triumph over hostile Indians at the Tippecanoe River in Indiana.).
On March 4, 1841, Harrison offered a rambling two-hour inauguration speech on a cold, rainy afternoon. Right after, Tyler left town and returned to his plantation. He figured he could be vice president there simply as well as he could in Washington, and a lot more comfy.
It was at Tyler’s plantation that the messengers had actually delivered their eventful news.
When Tyler arrived in the nation’s capital, the only person who assumed that he was now president was Tyler.
Here’s why:.
Short article II of the Constitution reads as follows: “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Inability, resignation, or death to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President.”.
What does that suggest?
It could quickly suggest that the Vice President was just a placeholder up until a new President could be picked by Congress or by an unique election. That’s what John Quincy Adams the former President and now Massachusetts congressman thought. And many concurred with him.
Tyler took a distinctly various view.
, if ownership is nine-tenths of the law.. Tyler had ownership. And he wasn’t going to release.
Therefore, a historic precedent was permanently developed: in case of the death of the President, the Vice President serves out the staying term. We take this smooth shift for approved now, however just since of what Tyler did.
His very first crisis solved, he right away entered another.
Tyler was a member of the Whig Party. The Whigs were formed to oppose the Democrats which had been developed and dominated by the seventh President of the United States, Andrew Jackson. The huge issue for the Whigs was the facility of a nationwide bank which they saw as a way to get cheap credit to farmers to finance westward expansion. The Democrats, taking their lead from Jackson, disliked the idea of giving power to what they thought were corrupt New York money interests.
Tyler, although he was Whig, disliked the concept of a nationwide bank as much as Jackson did. When Congress, then dominated by the Whigs, passed a national bank expense, Tyler banned it– two times. The Whigs were so incensed, they kicked Tyler out of the party.
By his second year in workplace, he was a President without a party.
One might fairly ask, why, if Tyler opposed the National Bank, was he Whig at all. The answer reveals both the strength and weakness of that party. The strength was that it was catch-all for anybody who didn’t like the Democrats– this consisted of, unusually enough, both Northern abolitionists and Southern slave-owners like Tyler. Abraham Lincoln, it needs to be kept in mind, was elected to Congress as a Whig. The weakness of the party was that it had no unifying platform. No two members could settle on any one thing– except that they disliked the Democrats, obviously.
Tyler thought he might use this confusion to his benefit to win a second term. His plan depended upon attaining one massive objective, bringing the Lone Star Republic of Texas into the United States. Texas, Tyler believed, would unify Whigs who preferred westward growth and Southern Democrats who liked the idea of adding a brand-new slave state.
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The Constitution was surprisingly vague on this concern– up until Vice President John Tyler took a company stance. John Tyler, tall, thin, with an aquiline nose and regal bearing, was the ultimate southern gentleman. Tyler was a member of the Whig Party. The Whigs were so incensed, they kicked Tyler out of the party.
One might relatively ask, why, if Tyler opposed the National Bank, was he Whig at all.
