John Tyler.
Publié le 10/05/2013
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A “His Accidency”
Tyler was summoned to Washington, D.C., as acting president.
The Constitution seemed unclear as to whether Tyler should now merely assume the duties of thepresident until new elections were held, or whether he should in fact assume the office of president.
Tyler chose the latter view and on April 6 had himself sworn in aspresident.
This procedure, later taken for granted, exposed Tyler to much censure and abuse.
Throughout his term, Whigs and Democrats alike denounced his action.He received mail addressed to “Ex-Vice President Tyler” and “Vice President-Acting President Tyler,” but he returned all such mail unopened.
Congress and the pressreferred to him as “His Accidency,” and the Cabinet was bitterly hostile.
Tyler began his administration without advisers or friends.
In addition, he was soon to becomeknown as “a president without a party.”
B Domestic Affairs
In 1841 Congress began its war with Tyler by passing a bill that reestablished the Bank of the United States.
Tyler vetoed the bill as unconstitutional because it gave thestates no right of approval over bank branches set up within state borders.
A second bank bill was promptly passed by Congress and as promptly vetoed by Tyler.
Thissecond veto caused Tyler to be solemnly read out of the Whig Party.
His action also led to the resignation of his entire Cabinet except for Secretary of State DanielWebster.
In 1842 Tyler followed his bank vetoes by vetoing tariff bills, and a House resolution called for his impeachment.
However, the resolution was later defeated bya vote of 127 to 83, and Tyler signed a new tariff of 1842 carefully written to avoid his constitutional objections.
C Foreign Affairs
Tyler had more success in international affairs, and his administration was notable for two treaties.
The Webster-Ashburton Treaty, signed in 1842 by the secretary ofstate and the British envoy Lord Ashburton, settled the Northeast Boundary Dispute, a long and bitter conflict with Great Britain over the border between Maine andCanada.
Two years later a treaty signed by Tyler's envoy Caleb Cushing at Wanghia, China, opened the way for trade between China and the United States.
D Second Marriage
In 1842, Tyler's first wife, who had borne eight children, died three years after she had suffered a paralytic stroke.
A few months later, Tyler met Julia Gardiner, whowas from a prominent New York family.
Although he was 30 years older than Julia, Tyler successfully courted her, and in June 1844 the couple was married secretly inNew York City.
The new first lady was a brilliant White House hostess.
Tyler and his second wife had seven more children.
E Annexation of Texas
In the fall of 1843, Tyler attempted to form a third party drawn from moderate Whigs and Democrats.
The issue around which he hoped to rally the party was theannexation of the Republic of Texas, which had seceded from Mexico in 1836.
Although France, Britain, and the United States all recognized the independence of Texas,Mexico still regarded it as a Mexican province.
Annexation was opposed by some Americans as risking war with Mexico.
Many others opposed annexation because itmeant the addition of a huge new slave state to the Union.
This consideration caused Webster to resign from the Cabinet.
A Southerner, John C.
Calhoun, was secretary of state in April 1844, when Tyler signed the annexationtreaty with Sam Houston, the president of Texas, and sent it to the Senate for ratification.
Slavery was the key issue in the debate.
When the Senate defeated thetreaty, the annexation of Texas became the chief issue in the 1844 campaign.
F Campaign of 1844
Tyler's third party was little more than a group of officeholders in the Tyler administration and patronage seekers.
It met in Baltimore, Maryland, and nominated Tylerfor president.
However, James K.
Polk, the Democratic Party's candidate, came out in favor of annexation and the Whig candidate, Henry Clay, tried to avoid the issueof annexation.
Tyler withdrew from the race and threw what little support he had to Polk, who won the election.
Polk's election encouraged Tyler to try again to push through the Texas annexation.
He knew that the House of Representatives, full of annexation spirit following theelection, was on his side.
He also thought he could carry a slim majority in the Senate, although not the two-thirds that the Constitution required to ratify a treaty.
Hedecided to ignore the treaty and use an entirely different procedure: he proposed to Congress that it annex Texas by joint resolution.
This would require only a simplemajority vote in each chamber.
There was some protest that he was stretching the Constitution, which did not specifically provide this method for making a state out ofan independent nation.
But Tyler, who had for years protested any attempt to find implied powers in the Constitution, was willing in this case to forget his principles.The Texas Resolution easily passed the House.
It was passed by the Senate by the tiny margin of 27 to 25 votes.
On March 1, three days before leaving the presidentialoffice, Tyler signed the Texas annexation bill into law.
V LAST YEARS
At the end of his term, Tyler retired to Sherwood Forest, his plantation home in Virginia.
In 1861 he headed a peace convention that met in Washington, D.C., in thehope of averting the coming Civil War.
However, the inaugural address of President Abraham Lincoln hardened Tyler's views, and after the convention disbanded, hereturned to Virginia to urge secession.
Virginia was admitted to the seceding Confederate States of America in May 1861, and Tyler became a delegate to the provisionalConfederate Congress at Richmond.
In November 1861 he was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives.
However, before he could take office, Tylersuffered a stroke and died on January 18, 1862.
He was buried in Richmond beside the tomb of President James Monroe.
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