John Tyler

By 1840, John Tyler had been a discussed candidate for vice president amongst the Whig Party for almost half a decade. In 1836, the Whig Party - founded in 1834 as a broad coalition of people who opposed Andrew Jackson and his populist movement - tried to split the vote against Jacksonian Democrat Martin Van Buren and thus send the election to the House of Representatives, where they'd have a better chance of winning. To this end, the Whigs nominated 3 separate politicians: A northern nominee, a southern nominee, and a western nominee. Tyler was selected as the vice presidential candidate for 2 of those 3 candidates and was almost made the running of the third candidate as well. Van Buren still managed to win the election. However, almost immediately after Van Buren took office in 1837, a severe recession known as the Panic of 1837 broke out. For this reason, the Whigs were certain to win in 1840. And they decided to make their nominee William Henry Harrison. His running mate was John Tyler.

Under the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too!" (a reference to Harrison's status as a US general who led troops to victory against Native Americans in the Battle of Tippecanoe), Harrison and Tyler became the most likely choice for the election. When a pro-Van Buren newspaper mocked Harrison by saying, "Give him a barrel of hard cider and settle on him a pension of 2,000 a year and take my word for it he would sit the remainder of his days in a log cabin", the Whig campaign started giving people model log cabins and hard cider at rallies. In some cases, they even combined the gifts to create a tiny log cabin stuffed with bottles of hard cider. This sense of unity, culture, and hospitality, coupled with Americans' dissatisfaction with Van Buren's performance, ensured Harrison's victory.

On March 4, 1841, Harrison was inaugurated, formally replacing Van Buren as president. Harrison's swearing-in ceremony was notable both in that it contained the longest inaugural address in American history and that it was the first time the transcript of an inaugural address was accessible outside of Washington DC on the day it was originally given. A few weeks later, Harrison became severely ill, contracting pneumonia possibly from poor drinking water in Washington DC. As a result, on April 4, 1841, Harrison died. John Tyler was now president. But for how long? Although today it seems obvious what the vice president's role is when the president dies, it was a lot less clear in 1841. Some people argued that Tyler - and the vice president in general - should simply act as president until a new election can be held in which a more long-term successor would be appointed. Others, however, said that Tyler should simply serve until what would have been Harrison's term expired.

Tyler sided with the latter group. On April 6, 1841, he ordered Roger Taney (the director of the Supreme Court at the time) to administer the oath of office. Tyler declared, "I, John Tyler, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States of America and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" and became the leader of the US. This set up the aptly-named Tyler Precedent, in which the vice president serves for the remainder of what would have been a president's term if said president died, was removed from office, or resigned. This tradition kept the country stable following the deaths of chief executives all the way until 1967 when it was formalized by the 25th Amendment. However, this was arguably Tyler's best achievement. The rest of his presidency was very flawed, resulting in his status as a bottom 10 president.

Aside from the Tyler Precedent, Tyler did have a few other accomplishments. He opened up trade with China, completed the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (which diffused a border dispute between the US and Britain), ended the Second Seminole War, and admitted Florida into the Union. Tyler also signed the Presidential Election Day Act, which reformed presidential elections from taking place over the course of several weeks or even months (as had been the case since the Constitution was first adopted in 1788) to taking place solely the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. We still use this law from the Tyler Administration. In the department of foreign policy, Tyler expanded the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine essentially was the US under President James Monroe threatening war on any country in the Eastern Hemisphere (Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania) that didn't respect the sovereignty of the Western Hemisphere (the Americas). Tyler edited the Monroe Doctrine to include Hawaii in the Western Hemisphere. Millard Fillmore would go on to use this policy to protect Hawaiian independence from France.

However, even with some of his achievements, Tyler still had significant flaws. At best, these achievements contained important nuance that detract credit from the Tyler Administration. For instance, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, while completed by Tyler, was a product of previous presidents. Martin Van Buren began negotiating the document. Were it not for Van Buren, Tyler wouldn't have been able to sign the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in the first place. Tyler also created star routes, a method through which the post office could fund its operations by selling mail routes to private bidders. Since this decision expanded government revenue, this sounds good on paper. However, as time went on, this led to corruption in the form of the Star Route Affair. Post office employees would coerce Congressmen into commissioning star routes and giving money to the post office so that they could create even more star routes, all of which would be sold to private bidders with the profits being stuffed into the pockets of patronage officers rather than mail delivery. I think it should have been pretty clear to Tyler how star routes could lead to corruption, yet he still went through with it.

Tyler also abolished the independent treasury. Established by Van Buren in 1840, the independent treasury was a collection of private organizations tasked with storing deposits made by the federal government. Dismantling this system was a very bad choice. The independent treasury was part of Van Buren's response to the Panic of 1837. A major cause of the Panic of 1837 was that, in 1832, Andrew Jackson dissolved the Second Bank of the United States (a government agency that basically served as a national bank) and distributed its funds to various state and private banks. These banks now had a lot more money and so could give out far more loans. This, in turn, produced an increased demand for loans that the state banks started printing money to keep up with. As a result, a major inflation crisis broke out that contributed to the Panic of 1837. The independent treasury could have prevented repeats of this.

Ideally, when a government agency is disbanded, its funds would be given to other public projects: Infrastructure, education, defense, etc. However, as shown by Jackson's actions in 1832, that isn't always going to be the case. So, when the country is being led by a president unwilling to redistribute the funds into other public works, it is important to have a place where said money can be safely stored. Thus, the money won't be stuffed into banks and, as a result, inflation crises like the one seen building up to the Panic of 1837 won't happen again. In other words, the independent treasury reduces the odds of enormous inflation crises.

During Van Buren's presidency, in February of 1839, about 50 Africans were abducted by Spanish sailors and taken to Cuba to be held as slaves. On June 28, 1839, those slaves were taken by their new masters to what is now the Dominican Republic on a ship called the Amistad. Two days later, on July 1, 1839, one of the slaves freed themselves from their chains and then emancipated the rest of the ship's slaves, known collectively as the Amistad Men. Together, they forcibly took control of the ship and ordered that they be returned to Africa. The crew ostensibly agreed. In reality, however, they were taken to Connecticut in the US. Upon arrival on August 26, 1839, they were arrested and taken to a prison in New York. Several abolitionists, realizing that Spain, Connecticut, and New York had all banned slavery by this point, sued the government, insisting that the slaves were engaging in self-defense.

Toward the end of 1840, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in favor of the abolitionists. Martin Van Buren, however, was desperate to increase his popularity in the south and so betrayed his northern, anti-slavery personal life and appealed the case to the United States Second Court of Circuit. In 1840, this court upheld the Connecticut Supreme Court's rulings and ordered the release of the Amistad Men. So, Van Buren appealed the case yet again, bringing it to the Supreme Court. On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of United States v. Amistad, siding with the abolitionists for the third and final time. From there, they ordered the release of the Amistad Men and demanded that their wish to be returned to Africa be fulfilled. Tyler, who was president now due to the fact that Harrison died right after this ruling, refused to comply. His pro-slavery views caused him to ignore a Supreme Court ruling and force a group of ex-slaves to be in America when that's not what they wanted. It took a private group of abolitionists and their fundraising to finally return the Amistad Men.

Arguably Tyler's worse action in office was one concerning foreign policy. In 1836, while Andrew Jackson was president, Texas broke away from Mexico and became an independent nation. Since Texas wanted to be part of the US, Jackson supported the idea of annexing Texas. But Van Buren didn't. Van Buren, a northerner from New York, disliked Texas' pro-slavery policies and didn't want it added to the Union as that would give slaveholders more power in Congress. Van Buren hid these reasons from the public. His opposition to annexing Texas was cloaked under the guise of not wanting to insult Mexico or hurt US-Mexican relations. Harrison didn't have a long-enough time in office to comment on the annexation issue. Tyler, however, made his views very clear: He wanted to annex Texas. On March 1, 1845, just before leaving office, Tyler went through with his plans.

Considering Texas is a major social and economic hub for modern America and that most Texans supported the annexation, many may consider this a positive. However, I do not. Not only did the acquisition of Texas increase the pro-slavery presence in Congress, but it also inflamed tensions with Mexico. Under James K. Polk, the annexation of Texas even led to the Mexican-American War. The annexation of Texas opened up a border dispute between the US and Mexico. Polk, in April of 1846, sent troops into the disputed territory in order to provoke a Mexican attack, which he then used as an excuse to declare war on that country. This war not only resulted in the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Mexican and American soldiers, but the territorial gains sparked a debate about the expansion of slavery that contributed to the civil war.