August 8, 2017
"John Tyler: The Accidental President" by Edward P. Crapol 2006 |
Loser?? |
John Tyler was raised on a wealthy ,slave owning, family plantation in Virginia. His family served as judges, governors, and other important positions in the state. He had the best schooling money could buy and finished college at age 17. Not because he was any sort of genius, it just seems like they started earlier back then. He then became a lawyer working with his dad etc. Almost immediately, he was elected to a series of influential offices and was a US senator by age 21 or something crazy like that. Obviously, not based on his skills.
As a politician, he was known for defending slavery. However, he did not seem to want any more slaves to be imported from Africa. He had the INSANE idea that slavery would just fade away through diffusion. Huh???! Well, he was a HUGE proponent of the US expanding into every space it could (Texas, Oregon, Mexico, Hawaii, Cuba, the moon ). His diffusion idea was that the more land the US had, the more the existing slaves would spread out everywhere. Then slavery would be less concentrated in the south. Once it was so thinly spread out, slavery would just sort of fade away. I know this sounds absolutely CRAZY! As president Tyler was ruled by his blind loyalty to slavery. (Tyler actually took his slave manservant to serve in the White House. He had to stand in the carriage by Tyler holding an umbrella over him!😝💩)
Tyler then starts becoming a quitter. He quits being governor of Virginia because he thinks he does not have enough power. THEN, he quits as US Senator because he gets mad over the slavery issue and the Missouri Compromise. As president, he was actually kicked out of his own party (the Whigs) while he was in office. He refused to support their main issue and reopen a national bank, so they kicked him out. Then 99% of his Whig cabinet buddies quit too. OK, so technically he did not quit his party. But he certainly quit supporting its ideas. THAT ability to totally buck your party and do what you think is right was one of the few things I liked about him. You would NOT see that today.
Tyler was the first vice president to succeed a president- after William Henry Harrison died after only one month in office. Since the constitution did not specifically say how presidential succession works, he had to move fast to take control. Tyler did this very well since he knew Harrison was dying and he was ready with a plan. The "Tyler Precedent " was then set for all future successions. It was actually added to the constitution much later by the 25th amendment.
Tyler also was totally paranoid that England was trying to overthrow slavery and thus destroy the union. He thought England was to blame for every foreign issue and even parlayed this paranoia into the admission of Texas into the union. He stoked fears that England would take over Texas if we did not and then the Brits would sneak across the border freeing slaves and other horrible things.
Since he was kicked out of his party, he couldn't really run
for a second term, so he quits
the race. Shocking, huh. Once out of office, he had lots of
kids with his much younger second wife (who sounds very high maintenance and
snooty). He has the most descendants of
any president since he was still having kids into his seventies- a total of 15 kids. He also supported Virginia seceding
from the union and was elected to a seat in their new government- but died
before taking office. So he is called
the "traitor president"
because he literally QUITS THE UNION.
I really had a hard time with this guy since he was unapologetic about slavery and did not even attempt to set his slaves free. Supposedly he was a "nice slave owner"- whatever that means. He was really unpopular which I think sort of hurt his feelings. He was very concerned for the rest of his life with making sure he got credit for bringing Texas into the union.
