Like his predecessor William Henry Harrison, John Tyler is unknown to
most Americans, even many educated ones.
He receives scant attention in a typical U. S. History course, and when
he is mentioned, he is credited with
little more than being the first vice president to succeed to the White House
upon the death of the sitting president.
Tyler is often portrayed as a caretaker president who accomplished
little of significance.
In John Tyler: the Accidental
President, historian Edward Crapol argues that while Tyler may not deserve
to be counted among one of our greatest or most significant presidents, the
traditional view of Tyler is far from the truth. Crapol discusses several of Tyler and his
administration’s significant achievements, while at the same time not shying
away from pointing out the flaws of “His Accidency.”
Like many of his presidential predecessors, John Tyler was born to
wealth and privilege. The son of a
wealthy planter, judge and member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Tyler
entered politics as a young man. He was voted to the House of Delegates at age
21, the US House of Representatives at 26, the Governorship of Virginia at 35,
and the US Senate at 37, and finally the Vice Presidency of the United States
at 50. When President William Henry
Harrison died after only a month in office, Tyler took the unprecedented step
of assuming both the title and the responsibilities of president.
With such a long career in public service, Tyler was well-prepared for
the presidency, and his future must have seemed bright indeed. But one inconvenient fact helped ensure that
Tyler would be a one-term president.
Politically, Tyler was a disciple of the Jeffersonian small government
and states’ rights tradition; as such he naturally joined the Democratic Party
when it was founded. Due to his
opposition to some of Andrew Jackson’s policies, however, Tyler left the party
and joined the Whigs, despite having little in common with them
philosophically. Upon becoming
president, Tyler made it clear he was a Whig in name only; as a result, the
party expelled him. Tyler tried to make
common cause with the Democrats and to gain their nomination for president in 1844,
but the party, still heavily under the influence of Jackson, rejected Tyler’s
overtures.
Despite being a virtual lame duck president for nearly his entire term,
Tyler and his administration made several important contributions to our nation’s
history. First, he “moved to strengthen and
modernize the American navy,” beginning the process of shifting to a steamship
navy. Second, he helped reduce tensions
with Great Britain (which were high in 1841), presiding over the signing of the
1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which, among other things, permanently set the
northeastern boundary between the U. S. and Canada. Third, Tyler expanded U. S. contact with the
Pacific, bringing Hawaii into the American sphere of influence and establishing
trade relations with China for the first time.
Fourth, Tyler and his administration did most of the work to bring Texas
into the U. S., making it relatively simple for his successor James Polk to
complete the process. For all of these
accomplishments, Crapol argues, Tyler should be seen as a strong president, not
the caretaker that many take him to have been.
Despite these important accomplishments, Tyler had several flaws and
contradictions. Despite being
ideologically a Jeffersonian, committed to states’ rights and a weak central
government, he strengthened presidential power and occasionally undermined that
of the states. And even though he had
qualms about the morality of slavery, he defended the “peculiar institution”
with vigor, going as far as to eventually join the Confederacy and thus become
the only former U. S. president to be branded a traitor and to not have his death
acknowledged by the U. S. government.
John Tyler: the Accidental
President is an engaging and highly informative read. In only 283 pages, Crapol succeeds admirably
in bringing to life not only John Tyler the man, but also his accomplishments
and failures, as well as the key happenings in late antebellum America. Anyone interested in gaining an understanding
of American politics in the early 1840s could hardly to better than to begin
with this outstanding book.
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