![]() ![]() Tragedy also seemed to stalk Tyler during his presidency. After his efforts to form a third party failed, he was forced to drop out of the 1844 presidential election. ![]() In July 1842, Representative John Botts of Virginia introduced the first impeachment resolution against a president in American history, accusing him of being “utterly unworthy and unfit to have the destinies of this nation in his hands.” The House approved an investigative committee’s report that condemned Tyler for “gross abuse of constitutional power” but declined to further pursue impeachment proceedings.Įxpelled by the Whigs, then rebuffed in his attempts to return to the Democrats, Tyler became a president without a party. The Whigs excommunicated the president from the party and tried to evict him from the White House altogether after he vetoed yet another one of their bills. After Tyler twice vetoed Clay’s bill to re-establish a national bank, supporters of the senator forced open the White House gates, hurled stones at the presidential mansion and shouted, “Groans for the traitor!” They hanged the president’s effigy-and then burned it on the White House porch for good measure.Ĭlay engineered a mass resignation of the cabinet with only Webster, who was in the midst of a treaty negotiation, remaining. This infuriated Whig leaders, in particular Senator Henry Clay. Tyler, who was aboard the vessel during the accident, was unhurt. The accident killed, among others, President Tyler's personal valet Armistead, two of his cabinet members, Secretary of State Abel Upshur and Secretary of the Navy Thomas Walker Gilmer, and David Gardiner, the father of his future wife, Julia. Excommunicated and hanged in effigy on the White House porchĪn illustration showing the tragic cannon misfire aboard the USS Princeton on February 28, 1844. “I am the president, and I shall be responsible for my administration.” He made it clear he would neither serve as an interim “acting president” nor carry out all of his predecessor’s agenda, which included re-establishment of a national bank and protective tariffs. “I can never consent to being dictated to,” Tyler informed his cabinet. ![]() ![]() The new president scoffed at his first cabinet meeting when Secretary of State Daniel Webster informed him that Harrison had agreed to abide by the majority decision of the cabinet on any policy matter-even if he was personally opposed. Those questioning Tyler’s legitimacy nicknamed the president “His Accidency.” Fellow Whigs would soon call him much worse. Former president John Quincy Adams wrote that Tyler was “in direct violation both of the grammar and context of the Constitution,” and eight senators voted against a resolution recognizing Tyler as the new president. Upon returning to the nation’s capital, Tyler took the presidential oath, angering strict constructionists who argued that the Constitution only specified that, when a president died, the vice president would inherit presidential “powers and duties”-not the office itself. Just 31 days after the inauguration, however, Tyler was stirred from his sleep by a rap on the door and given the news that Harrison had become the first American commander-in-chief to die in office. Questioning Tyler’s legitimacy: ‘His Accidency’ Tyler, deeming the vice president’s duties largely irrelevant, returned home to his Virginia plantation. After the victory of their “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” ticket, the 68-year-old Harrison became the oldest president in the country’s short history. Six years after Tyler left the Democratic Party over differences with President Andrew Jackson, the rival Whig party nominated the former congressman, senator and Virginia governor in 1840 as William Henry Harrison’s running mate. The maverick president’s fierce independent streak succeeded only in alienating politicians on both sides of the aisle. Playing hard to get, though, also failed to garner Tyler popular affection. “Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette-the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace,” said America’s 10th president. If a Mount Rushmore for America’s most unpopular presidents is ever created, John Tyler would be a leading candidate to have his likeness carved into stone. ![]()
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