John Tyler
I read President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler by Christopher J. Leahy.
The number of pages suggests this would be a slog similar to a McCullough biography. I was pleasantly surprised though how the author mixed excerpts from Tyler’s letters, narration of the events of the 1800s, and their own interpretations of his behavior. By the end I felt I now completely understood Tyler as a person.
He was brought up in the antebellum south obsessed with social status and “honor”. His father, a Judge, closely managed his career and taught him to idolize Jefferson. That particular ideology made him a terrible pick for the Whigs, a new party founded as an antidote response to Jackson and Van Buren. On the surface he opposed Jackson. He found Jackson’s heavy-handed response to South Carolina’s nullification crisis0 and use of the executive veto as going against his strong states rights principles. Those same principles mean when he becomes president after Old Tippencanoe’s death he is suddenly the only thing standing in the way of large, federally-funded, internal improvements and most notably a central bank (suddenly that veto doesn’t feel so gross to him).
There are three details that stuck with me from his presidency.
Bank Bill
The first is that bank bill. The nation was reeling from an economic crash in Van Buren’s term in 1837 (a crash that killed his re-election chances). That crash couldn’t be managed in part because Andrew Jackson’s had vetoed the rechartering of what had been the second bank of the United States five years prior. The Whigs were looking to replace that central function. Tyler, wary of expanding the power of the federal government, was not going to help them. But realizing that defeating any attempt at making the state of the nation better would kill his future political ambitions (he wanted to win the presidency as the first choice on the ticket) he began to think of what bank bill he might accept.
I think this moment is fascinating. Tyler begins communicating to lawmakers about what he wants to see in the bill. He is equally exact, but careful to not APPEAR as if he is dictating legislature. In all the biographies I’ve read so far this appears to be the first instance that a president is obsessed with the exact political narrative of his presidency. I think this obsession might just last through the presidents I was alive for. I think it ENDS in Donald Trump’s presidency and his use of Twitter (or Truth Social) to pierce the veil of presidential intentions1.
Princeton Disaster
The second moment begins on the Potomac on February 28, 1844 aboard the newly sailing USS Princeton. The crew is showing off their 27,000 pound gun. They fire it twice to the delight of guests, including John Tyler. They decide to do one more encore performance and fire it a third time.
And the moment is utter chaos. The gun explodes sending metal shrapnel across the ship’s deck. Six people are killed instantly. Secretary of State Abel Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Thomas Walker Gilmer, US Navy Bureau of Construction and Repair Head Beverly Kennon, Virgil Maxcy (distinguished attorney), John Tyler’s valet (enslaved) Armistead, and David Gardiner, the father of John Tyler’s future wife Julia. In that moment, the United States came its closest to further stressing its designated line of succession. John Tyler never bothered selecting his own vice president. It would have fallen to “senate president pro-tempore” Willie Mangum.
Mercury
The third is the fact that John Tyler likely dies of mercury poisoning. His young new wife Julia Gardiner Tyler is in love with the quack medical industry of the time. He is fed “blue-pill” after pill of trace amounts of mercury to deal with every ailment. I consider this karma for signing up so quickly to the new confederacy’s congress2.