Tyler, John

John Tyler ( * March 29, 1790 + January 18, 1862 )
10 President of the United States 1841 - 1845


Born on the family farm at Greenway on the James River, March 29, 1790, to a wealthy Southern planter. The family owned over 40 slaves. His father, John Tyler, was Governor of Virginia from 1808 to 1811.

At the age of twelve he began his studies at the College of William and Mary, where he passed the examinations five years later and then began the study of law.
At the age of nineteen he was admitted to the bar and began working as a law clerk.


As an adherent of the Republican-Democrats, he was elected to the Virginia State House in 1811. Two years later he married Letitia Christian ( * 1790 + 1842 ) , also from a wealthy planter family. They had seven children.
In 1817, he became a member of Congress in Washington. Tyler was not a supporter of the "Missouri Compromise" of 1820, which gave Congress the right to restrict slavery. He also opposed the Bank of the United States. For health reasons, he resigned from office in 1821 and withdrew from politics. He returned to politics two years later. He again sat in the Virginia state house. In 1825, Tyler became governor of Virginia for two years. From 1827 he was a senator in Washington from the state of Virginia and stood in opposition to President J. Q. Adams. In 1828 and 1832, he supported the election of A. Jackson, but was the only one in the Senate to oppose him in 1833, because of a disagreement over the enforcement of the tariff in South Carolina by military means. He thus strengthened the new party of H. Clay, the Whig party, opponents of President Jackson. In 1836, he resigned his senatorial seat in Washington due to disagreements with the Virginia House and attempted to run for the vice presidency on the Whig Party ticket. He was unsuccessful. In 1838 he again sat in the Virginia House. The following year, the Whigs nominated him as a candidate for Vice President of the United States, alongside presidential candidate W. H. Harrison.This time successfully. In 1840, Tyler became Vice President alongside President Harrison.
After Harrison unexpectedly succumbed to pneumonia on April 4, 1841, John Tyler took the presidential oath of office on April 6, 1841. It was the first time a vice president had assumed the highest office of the United States after the death of a president.

In the presidency.
Tyler's domestic political activities were marked by a series of controversies with the Whig Party, for which he ran for Vice President. Unlike the Whigs, Tyler was an advocate of the full rights and powers of the individual states of the federation. The president and the Whig Party chairman H. Clay became enemies. Clay introduced various bills in Congress that Tyler vetoed. Virtually the entire government resigned in protest of the President's actions. Tyler formed a new cabinet and selected Democrats for it. The Whigs did not give up, and in 1843 proposed an "impeachment" in Congress against the President. However, they did not get the necessary votes, so Congress did not allow impeachment. Despite these internal political contradictions, Tyler signed several important bills into law. As early as 1841, for example, the "Preemption Act". The following year, he ended the Seminole War II.
In 1844, Tyler married for the second time. The new First Lady was a young New Yorker named Julia Gardiner ( * 1820 + 1889 ). The couple had seven more children together.


In international politics, the dispute over the border between the state of Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick, as well as territorial claims on Lake Superior, was resolved during Tyler's tenure. In 1842, Tyler signaled U.S. interest in the Hawaiian Islands and warned other powers against seeking to acquire them. In 1844, a treaty was signed between the U.S. and China, opening Chinese ports to the United States.
At the end of his term, before the 1844 election, he supported the annexation of Texas to the Union, despite warnings from Mexico. This was apparently a pre-election ploy that failed. Tyler felt he did not have the support he needed and withdrew his candidacy in the upcoming presidential election.
Thus, in the December 7, 1844 presidential election, Whig Clay and Democrat Polk faced off. The election was won by the unequivocal proponent of annexation of Texas, James Knox Polk.
In the first two months of 1845, the House of Representatives and the Senate passed resolutions to annex Texas. Tyler signed it on March 1, 1845. This started the expansionist policy of the United States in the following years. On March 3, 1845, Tyler still signed the admission of the territory of Florida as the 27th state of the United States. The following day saw the inauguration of the new president J. K. Polk


Tyler and his family went to his new plantation in Sherwood Forest, Virginia, where several dozen slaves worked for him.
A few weeks before the outbreak of the Civil War, he led a peace conference in Washington, D.C., seeking a compromise between the slave and free states. The conference did not produce a satisfactory outcome for the parties. The beginning of the Civil War found Tyler serving in the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States.


On January 18, 1862, John Tyler died in the Virginia capital of Richmond, where he is buried.


drawn from: Peter Schafer, Presidents of the United States, Young Frontiers 1995, ISBN 80-204-0499-6
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Prezident John Tyler