Virtue Magazine

But a large number of the mere forty-three men who have held the office of president have faded into obscurity. Does anybody remember Chester Arthur? Millard Fillmore? Grover Cleveland? Benjamin Harrison? These names are all but forgotten, and one would have to go to the library, or watch a special on the History Channel, to learn much about their lives. You certainly don’t hear about them in day to day conversation.

Another man of that group would be John Tyler, our tenth president. Tyler was unique in an era of factional politics (an era that began about as soon as George Washington left office) in that he served nearly his entire term as president without belonging to a political party. How did this peculiar circumstance come about?

Tyler was born in 1790, and had enjoyed a successful career as a politician and soldier. He’d served in both houses of Congress, and as governor of Virginia, as well as winning an important battle over Indian forces at Tippecanoe. Selected as the running mate for Whig candidate William Henry Harrison in 1840, the party slogan for that election was, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”

Harrison won the election, and gave a long-winded inaugural speech in a cold March rain, the longest inaugural in history. Unfortunately, he would make no more history, as he caught pneumonia from the cold and wet, and died a month later. Tyler, who many Whigs viewed as unacceptable, but who had been on the ticket to appeal to Southern voters, took office. The Whigs had never expected such a turnabout, but many of them were not worried. Henry Clay, one of the most powerful politicians of the time, boasted, “Tyler dares not resist me, I will drive him before me.”

The pompous Clay was in for a rude surprise. Tyler immediately showed that he was not bound by Party loyalty, but by Constitutional convictions. It is hard to conceive of such a politician in our day and time. They were few and far between even back then. Tyler quickly earned the enmity of his Whig compatriots by vetoing a bill to create a Federal Bank of the United States. Every single member of Tyler’s cabinet resigned in protest, with the exception of Daniel Webster, who was busy working out a border dispute with Great Britain. Moreover, Tyler also opposed the Spoils system of the Whigs, what we call in modern parlance “pork barrel” politics. He believed using Federal funds for pet projects of congressmen violated the Constitution. In fact, Tyler eventually proved himself opposed to nearly every Whig policy, and was expelled from the party soon after becoming the first president to come to office through constitutional succession. For nearly his entire term, Tyler would rule as a president without a party.

Tyler’s term in office was marked by an allegiance to state’s rights, and a strict construction of the original intent of the Constitution. But when 1844 rolled around, since he lacked the support of a political party, he declined to run for reelection. His administration was marked by only one major event, the annexation of Texas, but he had left a legacy as a man devoted to principle, rather than party loyalty.

Tyler did not disappear from public life. In 1861, he led a peace commission to Washington, D.C. for the Southern states in an effort to avert war. President Lincoln refused to give peace a chance, so Tyler returned to his native Virginia. Devoted to the principle of state’s rights, he aligned himself with the new Confederacy. Not only was Tyler the only president to serve in the Oval Office without belonging to a political party, he was also the only president to repudiate the Union. He served in the Confederate House of Representatives for a short time, before dying in 1862 at the age of 71.

John Tyler was a man of principle, who was willing to risk popularity and career to uphold the Constitution. It is regrettable that he has been consigned to the hall of Forgotten Presidents, because he is a man who deserves our respect, and the emulation of the politicians of our age.