A 24 Year Party

I've lived two lives with this project. The first, visible to you, is that of lazy blogger, stuck in 1841 at the beginning of the Tyler Presidency. The second, which you haven't seen, is dedicated reader, 176 pages into this month's biography of Abraham Lincoln. And I've got to tell you, starting the Abraham Lincoln biography was a relief. I knew that something would be up with this project when I realized that between Andrew Jackson (#7) leaving office in 1837 and Abraham Lincoln (#16) taking off in 1861, we went through eight presidents in 24 years: that's a prescription for mediocrity. The last eight biographies--Tyler through Buchanan--have been like being a terrible cocktail party, having to make small talk with people you'd rather avoid: "oh, you went to Bowdoin? With Nathanial Hawthorne? And he later wrote your campaign biography? That's interesting."

And then Lincoln shows up, and it's like your friend just came in the door: "Man, am I glad to see you--these guys are duds. Let's get a beer and talk."

So: I still owe you posts on #10-#16. And while I'm not going to get three posts per president, as I've tried for in the past, I'll give you enough to make small talk at any cocktail party you might go to in the future.

John Tyler, then.

Tyler's the reason the Vice-President becomes President upon the latter's death. When William Henry Harrison dies not long after taking office in 1841 (and pretty much everyone knows he's going to die once he gets sick after the Inaugural), Tyler steps up and asserts his right to the Presidency. Up to that point, no one was really sure if he'd be an Acting President, an Interim President, or still Vice-President performing the President's role. Tyler's foes called him "His Accidency."

Tyler hates Britain so much that when he visits Niagara Falls, he refuses to go see it from the Canadian side.

Tyler's the guy who annexes Texas, as one of the last acts of his presidency. It's the main thing he's remembered for, and he totally swipes his successor's campaign promise to do so. He also sends Americans to China, gets us involved with Hawai'i, and his Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, negotiates a treaty with Britain to fix the border between Maine and Canada.

Henry Clay's convinced that Tyler will be the puppet of the Whigs in Congress, but when the National Bank comes up for re-chartering, Tyler vetoes it, much to the ire of Clay, who leads a movement to expel Tyler from the party. Tyler spends the next four years as a president without a party, and in fact, named his Virginia estate "Sherwood Forest" to signify that he had been outlawed by the Whigs. You can visit Sherwood Forest; in fact, Tyler's descendants still live there.

OK, here's your chat for the party: "You know, the Tea Partiers can talk as much as they like about Obama destroying the United States, but John Tyler actually worked to dissolve the Union. See, when Lincoln was elected in 1860 and South Carolina led the move to secede from the Union, Tyler actually led a Peace Commission to try to prevent war--several Northern states and the Southern states which had not yet seceded attended, and while they put forth a package of resolutions at the end of their meetings, Congress rejected them. Then, after war broke out, Tyler sided with his home state of Virginia, and was even elected to the Confederate Congress, although he died before he could take his seat. He's still the only president not to be officially mourned in Washington."

Up next: James K. Polk, who is actually cooler than anyone else at the party (until Honest Abe shows up, of course).