University of Virginia Library

JOHN TYLER.

John Tyler (whose descent has been deduced in a preceding sketch),
the second son of Governor John and Mary (Armistead) Tyler, was
born at "Greenway," his father's seat in Charles City County, Virginia,
March 29, 1790. As a mere child he was of an unusually studious
habit, and early exhibited a passion for books, particularly for works
of history. Entering William and Mary College as a student at the
age of twelve years, he soon attracted the notice of Bishop James
Madison, the venerable president of that institution; and during his
entire collegiate course young John Tyler was, in an especial degree,

YORKTOWN MONUMENT.

the favorite of that distinguished man. Generous in his disposition,
with pleasing and conciliating manners, and an open, frank and hearty
spirit—these characteristics, by which he was distinguished through life,
and which were so largely conducive to his public success, then endeared
him to his fellow-students, and he was not less their favorite
than that of his teacher. Having completed the courses, he graduated
at the age of seventeen, and delivered on the occasion, an address on
the subject of "Female Education," which was pronounced by the
college faculty as singularly creditable. He now devoted himself to the
study of the law, which he had already commenced during his collegiate
course, and passed the next two years in reading, first with his
father, and latterly with Edmund Randolph, a former Governor of Virginia
and one of the most eminent lawyers in the State. Aided by the
counsels of two such preceptors, his progress in this, as in his previous
studies, was most rapid. At the age of nineteen he appeared at the
bar of his native county as a practicing lawyer, a certificate having been
given him without inquiry as to his having attained the prerequisite
years of manhood. Such was his speedy success, that it is said that ere
three months had elapsed there was scarcely a disputable case on the
docket of the court in which he was not retained. At the age of twenty
he was offered a nomination as the delegate from Charles City County
in the State Assembly, but he declined the proffered honor until the
following year, when, having attained his majority a short time before
the election was held, he was chosen almost unanimously a member of
the House of Delegates. He took his seat in that body in December,
1811. The breaking out of the war with Great Britain, with its incidental
exciting measures, and the public solicitude involved, afforded a
fine scope for the improvement of his powers of oratory. Like the
brilliant Charles James Fox, he spoke often with the view of increasing
them, and was encouraged by the attention which his speeches commanded.
About this period, Messrs. Giles and Brent, then Senators
from Virginia, disobeying an instruction from the State Assembly to
vote against the chartering of a United States Bank, Mr. Tyler introduced
a resolution of censure in the House of Delegates, animadverting
severely upon the course of the Senators, and laying it down as a principle
to be adhered to undeviatingly thereafter, that any person accepting
the office of United States Senator from Virginia tacitly bound himself
to obey, during the period of his service, the instructions he might
receive from its Legislature. Later in his public life he consistently
exhibited his adherence to a principle thus early inculcated, in resigning
his seat in the United States Senate rather than record a vote alike repugnant
to his judgment and his sense of conscientious duty. Mr.
Tyler continued a member of the Legislature by re-election for five
years successively. His popularity in his native county is instanced in
the fact that on one occasion, during this period, when seven candidates
offered themselves, Mr. Tyler received all the votes polled in the county
but five. Some years later, when a candidate for Congress, of the two
hundred votes given in the same county, he received, with a strong
and distinguished competitor, all but one. He zealously supported the
administration during the war, and raised a volunteer company when
Richmond was threatened, but they were not brought into action.
During the session of 1815-1816, whilst still a member of the House of
Delegates, Mr. Tyler was elected a member of the Executive Council,
and acted in this capacity until November, 1816, when he was elected
to fill a vacancy in the representation in Congress, from the Richmond
district, occasioned by the death of Hon. John Clopton, and took his
seat in the month following. In the debate in this body on the rate
of compensation to be allowed its members, and in which Calhoun, John
Randolph, Grosvenor, Henry Clay, Southard and other prominent
statesmen participated, Mr. Tyler eloquently replied to Mr. Calhoun,
advocating a return to the former per diem rate of six dollars, and consistently
maintaining his early enunciated principles of the rights of constituents
and the duty of their representatives. Said he: "You have
no robes of office here to bestow, no stars or garter to confer, but the
proudest title which we can boast, and the only one worthy of being
boasted of, is that which is to be read in the applause of our contemporaries
and the gratitude of posterity. * * * If a member of this
body is not a representative of the people, what is he? and if he is, how
can he be regarded as representing the people when he speaks, not their
language, but his own? He ceases to be their representative when he
does so, and represents himself alone. Is the creature to set himself in
opposition to his creator? Is the servant to disobey the wishes of his
master? From the very meaning of the word representative, the obligation
to obey instructions results. The Federal Constitution was submitted
to conventions of the different States for adoption. Suppose the
people had instructed their representatives in convention to have rejected
the Constitution, and their instructions had been disobeyed, would this
be called a government of the people adopted by their choice? * * *
The gentleman from South Carolina mentioned the name of Edmund
Burke. I venerate the talents of that distinguished orator as highly as
any man; and I hold in high respect the memory and virtues of the
illustrious Chatham; but, highly as I esteem the memories of those great
statesmen, they will suffer no disparagement by a comparison with the
immortal Sidney. I prefer to draw my principles from the father of the
Church, from the man who fell a martyr in the cause of freedom, who
consecrated his principles by his blood, from the fountain from which
has flowed the principles of the very Constitution under which we act."
Mr. Tyler also in the same session ably opposed the resolution, introduced
by Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, proposing an amendment to
the Constitution, which provided for the establishment of a uniform mode
of electing representatives in Congress and electors of President and Vice-President
throughout the United States, by the division of the several
States into districts for those purposes. After much discussion, the
proposition was laid on the table near the close of the session, not again
to be revived. In the fifteenth Congress Mr. Tyler voted against the
provision offered by Mr. Clay for a minister to the provinces of the Rio
la Plata, holding that it would be a virtual acknowledgment by the
United States of their independence. He also opposed all internal improvements
by the General Government, and the recharter of the
United States Bank, which he held to be unconstitutional. In the
lengthy debate on the resolutions censuring General Jackson for his
arbitrary course in the Seminole War, in the execution of the prisoners
Arbuthnot and Ambrister, Mr. Tyler warmly participated, urging the adoption
of the resolutions, but they were finally negatived. In the sixteenth
Congress he opposed the prominent measures of a revision of the tariff
for protection, and the Missouri Compromise, the latter upon the ground
that it restricted the diffusion of slaves, which he held to be the surest
means towards their ultimate emancipation. Mr. Tyler, by re-election,
continued to serve in Congress until near the close of the term of 1821,
when ill-health necessitated his resignation, and he retired to his farm,
"Sherwood Forest," in Charles City County, possessing the respect of
each of the great political parties. He did not long remain in private
life. In 1823 he was again elected a member of the Virginia Legislature,
and took the lead in all matters of public utility which occupied
that body; many of the most beneficial of the internal improvements of
the State being the result of his zealous and untiring labors. In 1825
he was elected by the Assembly Governor of Virginia, succeeding
James Pleasants, December 1st. He was re-elected the following year
by a unanimous vote, but being elected January 18, 1827, to succeed
John Randolph in the United States Senate, he resigned the office of
Governor on the 4th of March, and was succeeded by William Branch
Giles. The claims of the soldiers of the Revolution had ever been
warmly maintained by Mr. Tyler, and during his service in Congress he
had strenuously resisted every effort to reduce the pittances which had
been provided for them by the nation. In a communication to the
General Assembly, whilst Governor, he insisted that the claims of the
Revolutionary patriots of the Virginia State Line, which had with
flagrant injustice, been discriminated against, should be pressed upon the
attention of the General Government. He urges that: "The claims of
our soldiers have ever been listened to with an attentive ear by the constituted
authorities of this State, and would long since have been fulfilled
to the very letter of promise but for the magnificent donation
made by Virginia to the Federal Government of all her northern lands.
It may be confidently asserted that in making that cession this Commonwealth
never intended that the claims of any part of her hardy veterans
should in any manner have remained unprovided for. The fact of the omission
of all mention of her troops on State establishment in the compacts
entered into by her with the Government of the United States must have
been an omission resulting purely from accident. * * * The fact is,
that the Virginia troops on State establishment are as much entitled to
the liberality of Congress as those who served on Continental establishment.
Those of the State Line who were entitled to land bounty, enlisted
for a period not less than three years, and were found fighting by
the side of the Continental troops, from one extremity of the Confederacy
to the other. Their services in the achievement of our independence
equally entitle them to the nation's gratitude. Why, then, should
not Congress interfere in their behalf? While we present to the
National Government an occasion for the exercise of its liberality, we
present also a claim sanctioned by every principle of justice; and we
might reasonably indulge the anticipation that our application would be
listened to with attention and crowned with success." Mr. Tyler also
strenuously recommended to the Assembly the organization of a system
for the general instruction of the masses of the people. The year 1826
was marked by an event which threw the whole American nation into
mourning—the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. That
two of three only survivors of the signers of the Declaration of Independence
should breathe their last upon the same day, and that day the
anniversary of the promulgation of that grand instrument, was a coincidence
the most remarkable. Mr. Jefferson died at "Monticello," just
fifty years after the Declaration, at the very recurrent hour of the day,
it is said, at which the immortal work of his hands was read in the
Congress of the United States. On the receipt of the intelligence at
Richmond, Governor Tyler was requested to deliver a commemorative
address, and accordingly on the 11th instant, after scarce three days of
preparation, pronounced at the Capitol square, in Richmond, a funeral
oration, profoundly touching in its beauty and impressive eloquence.
Mr. Tyler took his seat in the United States Senate in December, 1827.
In that body he voted against the tariff bill of 1828, and was a firm
supporter of General Jackson on his accession to the Presidency, but
ever maintained an independence of action. He was frank in the
avowal of his opinions, which were sometimes at variance with those
of the President. Whilst thus efficiently representing Virginia in the
Supreme Council of the nation, Mr. Tyler also rendered service in
her important and illustriously composed Constitutional Convention
of 1829-30. During the session of 1831-1832 he opposed the recharter
of the United States Bank, maintaining, as on a previous
occasion, that it was an unconstitutional measure. He also voted
against the tariff bill of 1832; but in the course of a speech in the
Senate, he enunciated the principles of concession upon which, and at
his instance, Mr. Clay, in 1833, predicated his famous compromise act.
Mr. Tyler in a speech of much eloquence avowed his sympathy with
the nullification movement in South Carolina, in 1832, and in consequence
of the proclamation of President Jackson, withdrew his support
from him. When the movement was made in the Virginia Assembly,
in 1832, for the emancipation of slaves, William H. Brodnax, John
Randolph "of Roanoke," John Marshall, Philip A. Bolling, Thomas
Jefferson Randolph, James McDowell, and William H. Roane, being
among its prominent supporters, Mr. Tyler, then a member of the
Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, drew with his own
hands, and inserted in the code prepared for the District, but which
was not acted on, a bill providing for the abolition of slavery in the
District, thus anticipating by eighteen years a similar provision inserted
in the Compromise of 1850. In 1833 he was re-elected to the Senate
for six years, and opposed the removal of the Government deposits from
the United States Bank. His independent course separated him from
the President's friends in Virginia, who subsequently supported Mr.
Van Buren.

In 1836 the Legislature of Virginia instructed its Senators, Mr. Tyler
and Benjamin Watkins Leigh, to vote for expunging from the journals
of the Senate the resolution of Mr. Clay censuring the President for his
assumption of unjustifiable authority in removing the bank deposits.
As Mr. Tyler approved of the resolution, and believed the proposition
to expunge to be in violation of the Constitution, he could not conscientiously
obey instructions, and, true to his avowed principles, he
resigned his seat February 10th, and was succeeded by William Cabell
Rives. His colleague, Mr. Leigh, however, refused to obey the will of
the Legislature, and held his seat; and though locally lauded and complimented,
with Mr. Tyler, by the Whigs of Richmond (his residence),
with a public dinner, yet his course, in the sequel, was proved to be an
injudicious one, as weighed in the scale of his public interests, for, notwithstanding
his pure character and great intellect, his error was irredeemable.
He was henceforth barred from political preferment. In
the spring of 1838 Mr. Tyler was elected by the Whigs of James City
County to the Virginia Assembly, and in 1839 he was elected a member
of the Whig Convention that met at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to
nominate a candidate for President of the United States. He was
chosen Vice-President of the Convention, and warmly supported Mr.
Clay for the nomination. The choice of the Convention, however, was
General William H. Harrison for President, with Mr. Tyler for Vice-President,
and in 1840 they were both elected, and were inaugurated
on the 4th of March, 1841; but the former dying April 4th, after an
administration of only one month, Mr. Tyler, in accordance with the
provisions of the Constitution, became President of the United States.

He retained the Cabinet appointed by his predecessor, and proceeded to
check, so far as he could consistently with the previous commitments
of Harrison, the removal of the supporters of Van Buren's administration.
In the canvass of 1840 no decision had been made relative to a
fiscal agent for the receipt and disbursement of the public moneys. The
issue of a bank was repeatedly pressed as a desideratum by prominent
Whigs and the newspaper organs of their party. President Tyler, in
his first message, while reserving to himself in express terms the power
to veto any measure which would contravene the Constitution, recommended
the repeal of the sub-treasury law, and the substitution of a new
fiscal agent. He had always denied the power in Congress of national
incorporation operating per se over the Union. In private conversations
with Clay and other prominent Whigs, before the meeting of Congress,
he had urged a scheme which would not involve his Constitutional objections.
This they rejected, and Mr. Clay again proposed, essentially,
instead, the re-establishment of the old United States Bank. The
President vetoed the bill, as he did another, in alleged accordance with
his suggestion for a fiscal agent, which was offered for his approval.
The sub-treasury law in the meantime had been repealed; great excitement
prevailed, and all of Mr. Tyler's Cabinet, with the exception of
Daniel Webster, resigned, and a simultaneous assault was made upon
him by the press and orators of the Whig party throughout the country.
He, however, remained firm, and immediately filled his Cabinet with
eminent State's rights Whigs and Conservatives.

The most important acts of the long session (two hundred and sixty-nine
days) of 1841-1842 were a new tariff law with incidental protection, an
act establishing a uniform bankrupt law, and an apportionment of representatives
according to the census of 1840. The momentous treaty with
Great Britain, settling the northeastern boundary of the United States,
was ratified at Washington on the 28th of August, 1842. The provision
in its eighth article concerning the African squadron for the protection
of American commerce, and the prevention of the slave trade
on the coast of Africa, was the suggestion of Mr. Tyler. In May, 1843,
the President appointed Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, a commissioner
to the Chinese government. On the 12th of April, 1844, a
treaty was concluded at Washington, providing for the annexation of
Texas to the United States, but on the 8th of June it was rejected by
the Senate. On the 25th of January, 1845, a joint resolution for annexing
Texas was adopted in the House of Representatives by a vote
of 120 to 98; and the same was adopted in the Senate, on the 1st of
March, by a vote of 27 to 25, and the same day it was approved by the
President. Thus, two days before the expiration of his term of office,
Mr. Tyler had the satisfaction of witnessing the consummation of an
act which he had long earnestly desired and persistently striven for.

The terms proposed were ratified on the 4th of July following by a
Constitutional Convention assembled at Austin, Texas, and that State
became one of our great Union. Upon the expiration of his Presidential
term Mr. Tyler returned to private life, upon his farm in Virginia.

In the Democratic Convention which assembled at Baltimore, Maryland,
on the 13th of May, 1844, to nominate candidates for President
and Vice-President, Mr. Tyler was the first choice of a large following
for the Presidency, and it was thought that his friends held the
balance of power in several States. Mr. Van Buren, also a candidate,
was so objectionable to many of the Democratic party that it was urged
that, between him and the candidate of the Whig party, they would
prefer Mr. Clay. The friends of Mr. Tyler, to secure the defeat of
Mr. Van Buren, and the nomination of a candidate in sympathy with
the policy and measures of the administration of Mr. Tyler, notably the
annexation of Texas, resolved upon the two-thirds rule, and under its
application, Mr. Van Buren was discarded, and Mr. Tyler withdrawing,
James K. Polk was nominated, and subsequently elected as the
successor of Mr. Tyler.

During the long period of relief from the strife and anxieties of political
life, which was now enjoyed by Mr. Tyler in the blessings of a
competence and of domestic bliss, there was an episode not the least
creditable in his honorable career, and highly characteristic in its
marked exemplification of his sense of duty as a citizen. In 1847 he
was designated by the justices of Charles City County for an essential
but humbly named duty, and to which, in common with other citizens,
he was liable. It was at the instance, it was said, of those who wished
to inflict a mortification by conferring, in derision, upon an ex-President
of the United States the humble position of an overseer of the
public road. Mr. Tyler promptly accepted the appointment, and was
no less decided in the execution of the trust—the emphatic meed,
without dissenting voice, accorded, being that "he was the best overseer
of the roads that Charles City ever had."

Mr. Tyler was twice most happily married; first, March 29, 1813, to
Letitia, the third daughter of Robert Christian, of "Cedar Grove,"
New Kent County, long a member of the Virginia Assembly, and a
member of a family[11] which has for quite two hundred years been

GEORGE SANDYS,

Treasurer of the Colony of Virginia in 1621.

Contemporaneously the author of the first book written in
what is now the United States of America, "Ovid's
Metamorphosis," printed at Oxford in 1632.

honorably and usefully represented in the judiciary, and in varied local
trusts in Virginia. She died at Washington, September 10, 1842.
Her virtues are gracefully recorded by Miss Holloway, in The Ladies
of the White House. The second marriage of Mr. Tyler is invested
with touching interest, and was the romantic sequel of a tragic occurrence
which profoundly moved the sympathies of the American nation.
The powerful armament of the United States steamship "Princeton"
claimed the attention of the Secretary of the Navy, and by the invitation
of her builder and commander, Captain Stockton, on the 28th of
February, 1844, a large party of distinguished persons, accompanied
with ladies, were present on board during an excursion on the Potomac
to witness the trial of her powers. The day was charmingly bright and
pleasant, and the occasion one of rare social gratification, when, with
the closing scene and the setting sun, a terrible accident spread disaster
around. One of the largest guns, on being fired for the third time,
whilst the frigate was opposite Mount Vernon, burst, and the explosion
killed instantly the Secretary of the Navy, Thomas W. Gilmer; the
Secretary of State, Abel P. Upshur; Commodore Beverley Kennon,
chief of one of the Naval Bureaus; Virgil Maxcy, recently Charge
d'Affaires to The Hague; Hon. David Gardiner, of New York (who was
accompanied by his lovely and accomplished daughter), and three
domestics, besides wounding twelve of the crew. The tender and soothing
attentions of the President (who was present) to Miss Gardiner in
her terrible bereavement sensibly touched her heart. A sympathetic
bond was established, and the happy sequence was the marital union of
John Tyler and Julia Gardiner[12] on the 26th of June following. The
issue of President Tyler, by his first marriage, was seven children, four
daughters and three sons: i. Mary, married Henry L. Jones; ii. Robert,
Signer of Patents, Prothonotary of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania,
President of the Repeal Association, of which William H. Seward was
Vice-President, Register of the Treasury of the Confederate States, the
able editor of the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, and a Centennial
Commissioner in 1876; married Priscilla, daughter of the distinguished
tragedian, Thomas A. Cooper. Their accomplished daughter, Mrs.
Priscilla Goodwyn, inherits the histrionic genius of her maternal grandfather;
iii. John, private secretary of his father, Major in the Confederate
States Army, and a brilliant and vigorous writer; iv. Letitia, married
James Semple, of the United States Navy, and Chief of Parole of
the Confederate States Army; v. Elizabeth, married William Waller,
and had issue, among others, John Tyler, a gallant but rash young
officer, successively of the Confederate Navy and Army, who sealed his
devotion to the South with his life; and William Griffin, assistant editor of
the Savannah (Ga.) News, married, first, Jeannie Howell, the sister of
the second wife of Jefferson Davis, and, secondly, Bessie Austin; vi.
Alice, married Rev. Mr. Dennison. Their daughter Bessie is an artist
of ability, which is meritoriously instanced in the portrait of her ancestor,
Governor Tyler, in the State Library at Richmond; vii. Tazewell, Surgeon
Confederate States Army, lately deceased in California, married
Anne Bridges, of New Kent County, Virginia.

The issue of the second marriage of President Tyler was also seven
children, five sons and two daughters (making a total by the two marriages
of fourteen children): viii. David Gardiner, a lawyer, residing at
the paternal seat, "Sherwood Forest," Charles City County; ix. John
Alexander, civil engineer, a gallant soldier in the Prussian Army in the
Franco-Prussian War, and in the Confederate Army. For merit in the
first service he was invested by the hands of Kaiser William himself
with a medal and ribbon; died September 2, 1883, at Sante Fe, New
Mexico; x. Julia, married William H. Spencer, of New York, and died
in 1871; xi. Lachlan, an accomplished and successful physician in
Washington, D. C.; xii. Lyon Gardiner, a talented lawyer of the Richmond
bar, late a Professor in William and Mary College, and an accomplished
writer, married Anne Baker, daughter of the gallant Colonel
St. George Tucker, of the Confederate States Cavalry, poet, and author
of the historical novel, Hansford: A Tale of Bacon's Rebellion, the son of
Hon. Henry St. George Tucker, and grandson of Hon. St. George Tucker
(jurisconsult), and his wife Frances, daughter of Richard Bland,
and who was the widow of John Randolph, and the mother of the
brilliant and erratic John Randolph "of Roanoke." The maternal
grandfather of Mrs. Tyler was Hon. Thomas Walker Gilmer; xiii.
Fitz Walter; xiv. Pearl. President Tyler, surrounded by his interesting
family, enjoyed the peaceful quiet of private life for a long series
of years, broken alone by generous and inspiring services as an orator
on special occasions, and to which his powers of eloquence subjected
him, until the stirring events of 1861 appealed to his patriotism, and
again enlisted his willing energies in the cause of his beloved State. He
was a member of and presided with great dignity over the earnest and
momentous deliberations of the Peace Conference which was proposed
by the Virginia Assembly at his suggestion, and which met in Willard's
Hall, at Washington, D. C., February 4, 1861. He was also a member of
the first Confederate States Congress, and while in attendance on that body
died at Richmond, Virginia, January 17, 1862, and was buried in the
adjacent beautiful and picturesque Hollywood Cemetery. Glowing
eulogiums upon his worth were delivered in both houses of the Confederate
Congress by Honorables R. M. T. Hunter, William C. Rives,
Louis T. Wigfall, William H. Macfarland, A. M. Venable and others.
In person President Tyler was tall and slender, with a fair complexion,
blue eyes, brown hair, an aquiline nose, and impressive and engaging
countenance. An excellent portrait of him is exhibited in the State
Library at Richmond, Virginia. His literary efforts evince mental
endowments of a high order, as well as the devotion and enthusiasm
of the scholar. "To purity of taste, elegance of diction, and strength
of reasoning he superadds the ornaments of a lively fancy and a copious
command of impressive and striking images." His "Life" (published
in 8vo, New York, 1843) presents the principal events of his life and

literary and political efforts to that period. His quite numerous addresses
thereafter, exist chiefly in the columns of the contemporary
press and in fugitive publications. The most important have been
collected by his grandson, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, in the Letters and
Times of the Tylers, now in press. The great secret of the popularity of
Mr. Tyler was doubtless in the earnestness of purpose, the innate generosity
and simplicity of nature, the winning sympathy, and the inspiring
cordiality which was manifest in his entire presence. His
ready adaptation to circumstances, and assimilation with the tastes of
every circle or auditory, united in a persuasive sway which we are wont
to term personal magnetism.