The Republican Vision of John Tyler

The Republican Vision of John Tyler

The Republican Vision of John Tyler DA N

M O N R O E

Texas A&M University Press College Station

Copyright © 2003 by Dan Monroe Manufactured in the United States of America All rights reserved First edition

The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1984. Binding materials have been chosen for durability. o øº

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Monroe, Dan, 1961The republican vision of John Tyler / Dan Monroe.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-58544-216-X (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Tyler, John, 1790-1862. 2. Tyler, John, 1790-1862—Political and social views. 3. Presidents—United States—Biography. 4. United States— Politics and government—1841–1845. 5. United States—Politics and government—1815–1861. I. Title. E397 .M66 2003 973.5'8'092—dc21 2002012286

For Julie, Always and Forever

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 3

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O N E

Republican Genesis

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Defending the Republican Vision

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A Jeffersonian Republican in the Age of Jackson FOU R

Honor, Consistency, and the Presidency

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F I V E

The Terrible Tariff and Distribution Too S I X

Prelude to Annexation S E V E N

Tyler and Texas

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Epilogue 180 Notes 187 Bibliography 231 Index 243

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Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the generous assistance of a number of great people. Collectively they prodded, encouraged, listened, advised, and sympathized with me. Mark Plummer, professor emeritus of American history at Illinois State University, gently nudged me down the path to the profession of historian. He introduced me to the man who became my mentor at the University of Illinois, Robert W. Johannsen, James G. Randall Professor of History. It was my great privilege to work as a research assistant for Professor Johannsen, and nothing could have been more rewarding. Generous with his time, unflagging in energy, firm but kind in his critiques, reserved but never aloof, his example of professionalism and dedication to the historian’s craft is unrivaled. Walter Arnstein was always ready to talk and advise, and his British History Association imbued this romantic Americanist with a grudging reverence for Albion. Thanks also to Robert McColley, John Hoffmann, Mark Leff, John Pruitt, and Judy Patterson. My fellow Johannsen graduate students, who together constituted the “Little Giants” discussion group, greatly increased my knowledge of nineteenth-century America and were boon companions as well. The “Little Giants” are Mike Conlin, Dave Raney, Bryon Andreasen, Matt Norman, Ed Bradley, Derren Kellogg, Bruce Tap, Bob Sampson, Susanne Schick, and Brian Kenny.

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Lewis Putman’s zest for life and sense of humor never failed to pick me up. Prof. Ji-Hyung Cho of Ewa Womans University, Seoul, South Korea; his wife, Soo-Yeon; and daughter, Connie, have been dear friends whose company I treasure. Dave Raney and his father, Bruce, shared their marvelous cabin in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for two sanity-restoring interludes. Mike Conlin offered consistent encouragement. The helpful denizens of the Newspaper Library, University of Illinois, cheerfully endured endless requests for microfilm. The staff of the History Library, University of Illinois, always pointed me in the right direction. Thanks to the library staff of the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign; Illinois State University, Normal; Eastern Illinois University, Charleston; Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield; Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg; Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Thanks also to the Department of History at the University of Illinois for giving me an opportunity to teach. Many thanks to Rev. Terry Harter, Eric Robeson, and the staff of Robeson on the Green for generously providing a peaceful place to work during the summer of 1998. Last and best, thanks to my family. My mother and father, Roger and Nancy Monroe, were always supportive. My brother, Zack, his wife, Christi, and son, Kyle, welcomed me for weekend hunting trips that restored a sense of well being. My in-laws, Jim and Joann Zinkhon, provided welcome respites along the gulf coast. Most of all, my wife, Julie, never figuratively left my side throughout this project. She put up with a house exploding with books, articles, journals, newspapers, and stacks of legal pads filled with scribbling. She created a home for us, a sanctuary, despite her arduous schedule as director of university audits, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is to her that this work is dedicated.

The Republican Vision of John Tyler

Introduction “So far the Administration has been conducted amid earthquake and tornado,” Pres. John Tyler informed his old friend Littleton Tazewell in the fall of 1842, alluding to the political strife he had experienced during the past eighteen months. Tyler had repeatedly vetoed legislation held dear by the Whigs, the very political party that, by nominating him vice president, had elevated him to the presidency when William Henry Harrison died. The vetoes prompted a stream of abuse from Whig politicians and newspapers and led to Tyler’s expulsion from the party by a rump Whig congressional caucus. Perhaps on no other occasion in American political history was the epithet “imbecile” applied with such frequency to a president. The vicious political infighting that characterized his term probably accounts for the low regard with which the Tyler presidency has been held by historians. His presidency is generally ranked as one of the least successful, despite achievements like the Webster-Ashburton treaty, which heralded the prospect of improved relations with Great Britain, and the annexation of Texas, which added millions of acres to the national domain.1 Tyler was left without the backing of his own political party after he repudiated its agenda. The Whigs disowned him, and the Democrats did not trust him. He was, after all, a former Democrat who left that party over what he alleged were the tyrannical and Constitution-wrecking actions of Andrew Jackson. Such a man could never be acceptable to party leaders like Francis P. Blair, editor of the Washington Globe, who considered Tyler an apostate and an opportunist who had abandoned the Democratic party

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and therefore deserved no sustenance from it. Historians have sought an explanation for Tyler’s behavior, which seemed a form of political suicide. Why would Tyler place himself in such an untenable situation, a president without a party and subject to a withering crossfire of criticism from both political parties? Tyler often framed his political decisions as instances of fidelity to principle, but this begs a number of questions. What were these principles so worthy of maintaining that they merited the sacrifice of a political career? How and why did they conflict with the goals of the Whig party? What was the philosophical basis, if any, for Tyler’s vetoes and for the other policies he pursued, such as the annexation of Texas. Only by answering these questions can one gain a full and complete understanding of John Tyler and his presidency and derive a conclusion as to whether Tyler was evincing an irrational political fanaticism that should be condemned or demonstrating a rare kind of political courage, a principled stand, that should be saluted.2 Historians have attempted to answer these intriguing questions. One of the most idiosyncratic accounts of Tyler’s life was written by his son, Lyon G. Tyler, historian and president of William and Mary College, as the nineteenth century waned. His three-volume biography exudes sectional animosity and is a highly partisan attempt to vindicate his father’s reputation. Tyler was reacting to the histories that emerged after the Civil War that largely upheld the northern view of that conflict and the events preceding it, placing the South and southern politicians and presidents in the docket. Lyon Tyler refought the Civil War in the course of defending his father, endorsing a laundry list of southern grievances. The motives of his father’s critics are relentlessly questioned, and President Tyler emerges as a heroic figure victimized by political blackguards. Lyon Tyler attributes his father’s seemingly inexplicable obstinacy to a laudable adherence to certain amorphous Jeffersonian principles embodied in documents such as the Virginia Resolutions of 1798. The origins of these principles, an exact explication of them, and a convincing explanation for Tyler’s devotion to them remained something of a mystery. Although partisanship colors its conclusions, Lyon Tyler deserves credit for collecting and publishing a good bit of his father’s extant correspondence, much of which had been destroyed during the Civil War, and for having the courage to take a stand contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy.3 Oliver Chitwood mined the Library of Congress’s collections of the papers of Tyler, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and others to produce a Tyler biography that appeared in 1939. He attributes Tyler’s stubborn vetoes to a commitment to states’ rights, but a precise definition of that term eluded him. Chitwood of course could not have taken advantage of recent historiography on republicanism and American political culture. Still, he arrives at some sagacious conclusions. For example,

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Chitwood suggests that Tyler’s greatest mistake was in not rejoining the Democratic party during the Van Buren administration, as did John C. Calhoun. Since the Whigs were devoted to a predominantly nationalist agenda—supporting a protective tariff and national bank—that Tyler opposed, he was setting himself up for trouble by remaining in that party. This is easy to assert with the benefit of hindsight, an awareness of the future vouchsafed to those of the twentieth century, but the decision was not so simple. Still, Chitwood is correct. Tyler would have been better served to return to the Democratic party. A more complete explanation of his political principles might help explain why he did not.4 In his book on the Tyler presidency, Robert J. Morgan concludes that Tyler was a “Jacksonian Whig,” an oxymoronic moniker to be sure and a strange one given Tyler’s fierce opposition to Jackson. But Morgan grasped an essential truth behind Tyler’s obstinate vetoes: he was fighting for a different vision of the public good, one that was at odds with Henry Clay’s ideal. To do that, Tyler seized the powers of the presidency and wielded them as necessary. The exact nature of his vision is not defined. Morgan correctly notes (in passing) Tyler’s devotion to the compact theory of the formation of the United States—that is, the Union was the creation of sovereign states—but does not go much further into the other republican principles that animated Tyler or their origins. The president is given proper credit for pursuing Texas annexation, for which others have reduced him to a cipher of Abel Upshur and John Calhoun, but Morgan does not explain the philosophical underpinning behind Tyler’s desire for Texas, seeing it solely as an interesting instance of a president dominating the foreign policy agenda.5 Robert Seager wrote a dual biography of Tyler and his second wife, the young and vivacious New York socialite Julia Gardiner. Tyler married young Julia nearly two years after the death in 1842 of his first wife, Letitia, and his new bride enthusiastically immersed herself in the White House social whirl for the remaining months of his presidency. Seager is a fine writer and researcher. The book is a biography of Julia Gardiner and her family as much as Tyler and as such must devote less to political philosophy than might otherwise be possible. Its comprehensiveness perforce demands a certain scrimping of important issues. Tyler lived until 1862 and Julia to 1889, and cataloguing their eventful lives required a high degree of selectivity. Greater emphasis on republican philosophy as a factor in Tyler’s decision making would have helped, though Seager could not of course take into account recent historiography on republicanism and the southern honor code. The author attributes Tyler’s desire for Texas annexation to “personal psychological reasons,” that is, a wish to freight with glory what had been a markedly rocky administration of the government. Seager notes Tyler’s many statements in favor of

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expansionism, “manifest destiny” as he called it, but does not note the connection of this attitude with republicanism. Tyler’s philosophical attachments seem to fade into the background in the discussion of the presidency. Seager argues that Tyler’s third-party movement was not an effort to win re-election but a way of pressuring the Democratic party into adopting Texas annexation as a key issue in the 1844 election, and when the Democrats chose proannexation candidate James K. Polk, Tyler’s strategy had triumphed. Tyler thought annexing Texas would benefit the entire Union, and he advocated it on strictly national rather than sectional grounds. While this thesis deserves to be tested, Seager’s work is a marvelous narrative deftly done with mounds of source material effortlessly handled.6 Lois Peterson contributed a solid overview of the Tyler presidency for the highly regarded American Presidency Series of the University Press of Kansas, good narrative history that includes helpful historiographic discussion. Peterson has also written a fine biography of Tyler’s sometime mentor Littleton Waller Tazewell. Space limitations precluded Peterson from dealing in any depth with Tyler’s pre-presidential career and upbringing, both of which give important clues as to why he acted as he did while president. Considerable credit for Texas annexation is given to Abel Upshur and a coterie of pro-Calhoun politicos, among them Thomas Gilmer and Duff Green. Tyler is reduced to a nullity, the unwitting tool of Calhoun men who seek to put forward Texas annexation for two reasons: to redress the representational balance that favored the North and to elevate John Calhoun to the presidency. Is it correct to assume such a degree of passivity in a man capable of facing down both houses of Congress?7 All of these studies are fine works of history that advance scholarly knowledge and understanding of John Tyler. However, none devotes any great space to explaining the principles that commanded such overwhelming fealty from Tyler, that compelled resigning a Senate seat, and that warranted politically suicidal presidential vetoes. Without a true picture of these principles and an explanation for Tyler’s seemingly lifetime commitment to them, his actions as president, indeed his acts throughout much of his political career, appear unfathomable, even irrational. Having reached the pinnacle of American political life and with Whig majorities in both House and Senate, Tyler clashed with his erstwhile allies and placed his presidency on the road to odium. In previous works he is described as committed to states’ rights or old republicanism, both of which are characterized as opposition to nationalism in all its forms. But a greater, more detailed, and nuanced description of what motivated Tyler than this rather vague characterization is required. This study will argue that a key to Tyler’s behavior was his devotion to

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republicanism. The literature on republicanism is voluminous, but one book stands out: Drew McCoy’s The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America was especially helpful. McCoy explains why republicans thought an agrarian society so vital to the longevity of a republic and why they believed expansion into space would preserve a republic, while development over time would undermine it. Republicans accepted the eighteenthcentury belief that societies had an organic lifespan and progressed through stages similar to those of an aging living organism, from birth to death. Each stage had its own unique economic model. This organic view of national life contained an inherent assumption of decay, a key component of republicanism. Drew McCoy provides a superb explication of these concepts.8 It is necessary to delve into the principles that animated Tyler, the upbringing that imbued him with such principles, and his early political career up to the presidency. His actions as president can then be examined from a more informed perspective. In accomplishing this goal, this study adheres to a biographical form in many respects, though it is not a biography. Every event in Tyler’s packed life is not dealt with here, as a certain selectivity was employed for the sake of brevity without harming the thesis. In the first chapter, the origins of Tyler’s political philosophy are traced and explained as he draws on them as a political figure in the Virginia legislature and in the U.S. House of Representatives. The next chapter details Tyler’s career in the House as he faces important political crises such as the Panic of 1819, the financially tottering national bank, and the Missouri debate. In the third chapter, Tyler rises to the U.S. Senate and comes into conflict with the great president from Tennessee, Andrew Jackson. Tyler employs his unique political perspective in reacting to the tariff controversy with South Carolina, the Removal crisis, and other political conflicts. These first three chapters examine Tyler’s youth and legislative career for evidence of his philosophical moorings and attitudes. That established, it is possible to move on to the presidency. The final four chapters are a selective treatment of John Tyler’s term as president. Key events are discussed, including the bank vetoes of 1841, the additional vetoes of the tariff in 1842, and the annexation of Texas. Using knowledge gained from the investigation of his early career, his actions as president become more understandable. A portrait emerges of a man struggling to maintain a treasured philosophical worldview amid an unforgiving political maelstrom.

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Republican Genesis When John Tyler was an infant just shy of a year old, a tall red-haired Virginian, reticent in manner yet passionate in politics, presented a memorandum to an austere fellow Virginian, also tall and possessed of a bearing that radiated authority and command. The former was the author of the Declaration of Independence; the latter was destined to be revered as the Father of His Country. The year was 1791. The subject of Thomas Jefferson’s memorandum to George Washington was the national bank, which Jefferson did not like at all. A conflict grew up around the bank and other elements of Alexander Hamilton’s legislative program and led to the creation of a political party John Tyler would join as an adult, the Republican party.1 Jefferson’s attitude toward a national bank was the product of a distinctly republican ideology that had migrated from Britain to America in the eighteenth century. It provided a framework through which the actions of the British government in the 1760s were interpreted, and that framework helped the colonists decide for independence. After the war this same ideology informed the debate on the Constitution and became the basis of opposition to Alexander Hamilton’s economic program. This eighteenth-century republican worldview was John Tyler’s patrimonial inheritance, an ideological prism through which to examine and interpret events, passed down by his patriot father, reinforced by the education he received, and absorbed from the social and political atmosphere of Jeffersonian Virginia. American political culture was heavily influenced by changes that occurred in Great Britain prior to the American Revolution. From his

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perch at the Exchequer, Robert Walpole had artfully employed government patronage in the form of pensions, military appointments, and bureaucratic posts to control Parliament, “exercising influence” as it was called. The result was a refreshing degree of political stability for Britain. Concurrent with these political innovations was a financial revolution that began when the British government created a national debt through the issuance of interest-bearing annuities during the last decade of the seventeenth century. To handle the newly acquired debt, a banking corporation came into being, the Bank of England, and its notes served as a national currency. The investment of private funds in government securities gave important segments of the public an interest in the success of the government and provided a capital pool vital to the financing of wars. Corporations and banking facilitated business and commercial expansion too, and a new monied elite appeared that thrived on profits earned from banking, stock trading, and related activities rather than more traditional land-based sources of wealth. A nascent industrial revolution bloomed as factories sprang into existence and labor became increasingly specialized.2 These dramatic changes sparked concern and resistance. Although the conception of a loyal opposition was imperfectly formed as yet in eighteenth-century Britain, critics nonetheless published polemical tracts denouncing both Walpole’s mastery of Parliament through influence and the rise of moneymen and corporations. The opposition drew on the political philosophy of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and others. Machiavelli argued that kings always sought greater and greater powers, while Hobbes asserted that human nature was corrupt and a clever ruler could exploit humanity’s inherent weaknesses to amass dictatorial powers. Two of the most renowned opposition writers in the eighteenth century were John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who wrote essays collected and published under the title Cato’s Letters; the first issues criticized the ill-fated South Sea Company and called for the execution of its company directors. Trenchard and Gordon also took on Walpole and influence, characterizing the ministry’s manipulation of patronage as a conspiracy to subvert the English Constitution and liberty, a blatant effort to alter the balance between king, lords, and commons crafted after the Glorious Revolution. A declension had taken place, England falling from a pastoral paradise governed by a disinterested landed elite to a corrupt state dominated by Walpole and the new moneymen who owed their fortunes to paper transactions and ruled in their own self-interest.3 Countless opposition tracts, pamphlets, and newspapers crossed the Atlantic and influenced American political culture (as Bernard Bailyn has argued so persuasively). When the British government moved to reassert firm control over the colonies after the conclusion of the

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French-Indian War, their efforts to garrison the frontier and raise revenue in the colonies to pay the associated expenses were interpreted by the colonists, imbued with the oppositionist mindset, as a conspiratorial design to deprive them of liberty and destroy the English Constitution, a view clearly expressed in the Declaration of Independence’s list of grievances against the king. The successful American Revolution resulted.4 After winning independence Americans were faced with the dilemma of how best to construct a republic, for a monarchy was out of the question. Classical texts, so much a part of eighteenth-century education, stressed that republics were fragile, tended to be short-lived, and depended for success on a virtuous citizenry. Their lack of staying power had to do with the easy corruptibility of human nature—humans were selfish and not prone to virtuous behavior for extended periods. Americans had to build a government, society, and economy that surmounted these problems and thereby assured the longevity of a republican system.5 A prevailing eighteenth-century belief held that the nation-state had an organic lifespan—a youth, maturity, old age, and death, each stage dominated by a particular economic model. Relatively young nations were agricultural, while relatively mature or old states were commercial. American republicans believed the citizens of an agricultural nation were bound to the land and self-sufficient, would exhibit a high degree of independence, and consequently could resist the corrupt snares of government patronage and vote as they pleased. In short, agrarians were virtuous. An advanced commercial state was plagued by citizens without roots to the country—moneymen who existed on the profits of paper transactions, manufacturing workers who were reduced to repetitive and dehumanizing tasks by specialization of labor, living in the poisonous environment of urban sprawl. They were more vulnerable to corruption and indeed possessed a taste for luxuries that republicans contended undermined morality. American republicans associated the passage of time with societal decay as the nation inexorably progressed to the advanced commercial stage and a host of accompanying ills that would doom the republic.6 Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other republicans hoped expanding across space rather than developing through time would delay this transition. North America was blessed with a surfeit of land, a green abundance for farmers to settle, clear, and plow, so much land that the agricultural stage that bred such a virtuous citizenry, that manna to republican government, might be preserved for a century or more. If land existed to absorb an expanding population into agrarian pursuits, society might never be compelled to adopt manufacturing to employ the otherwise idle masses. Societal decay might be preventable or at least substantially delayed. Acquiring additional territory became an important

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foreign policy goal for Republican administrations from Jefferson to Tyler.7 This outlook animated Madison and Jefferson as they reacted to the Hamiltonian program during the 1790s. Alexander Hamilton’s vision of progress was directly at odds with the republican conception. He embraced development over time, celebrated manufacturing and commerce as the accouterments of national greatness, and considered romantic notions of an agrarian New Jerusalem a foolish preference for primitivism. Rather than scatter the populace about the wilderness to hack farms from the underbrush and live a mean subsistence lifestyle, Hamilton proposed to corral men and women along the coast, where they would form a convenient labor pool for industrial growth.8 In addition to a predilection for agriculture, republicans shared many of the attitudes of the English oppositionists, which had infected American political culture in the eighteenth century. They were suspicious of standing armies, excessive taxation, debt, monied corporations, moneymen, and executive power as well as any measure designed to augment it. This put them on a collision course with Hamilton, whose program touched just about every exposed republican nerve. Jefferson’s memo against the bank presaged the emergence of America’s first political parties, the Federalists and the Republicans. Bitter political conflict between the two occurred throughout the 1790s, each side accusing the other of manifold sins up to and including treason. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798–99 constituted the Republican response to the Alien and Sedition Acts and became a sacred Republican text, referred to in speeches for decades. The resolutions emphasized a compact theory of national union, state sovereignty, and resistance to constitutional overreaching in law making.9 Two additional points should be noted about American republicanism as it evolved after the Revolution. First, republicans were ambivalent on the value of commerce. On the one hand, Madison argued that commercial growth and international trade could be helpful to the republican vision. Overseas markets for the inevitable surplus that billowed from America’s rich soil created an incentive for virtuous industry on the part of the farmer. He would be an active and alert citizen, solicitous for liberty’s preservation, and he would not sink into the apathy and indifference that came with a subsistence lifestyle. Western expansion was stimulated by strong crop sales to foreign markets. But commerce was potentially debilitating as well. It could give rise to scheming moneymen hankering after paper profits. Farmers who earned extra funds might discover an appetite for luxuries like fancy clothes and other finished goods, which might undermine contentment with the simple agrarian life. A pronounced ambivalence to commerce existed in Tyler’s native Virginia

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as a result of the system whereby planters and farmers sold their crops. British lenders were quite free in extending credit prior to the Revolution, and when tobacco prices fell a few years before fighting broke out, many farmers were saddled with mountains of debt difficult to retire, a potent source of Anglophobia among Virginians. Sound republicans regarded commerce with a suspicious eye.10 Republicans also manifested an extreme constitutional literalism, what was called “strict construction.” Some had been Antifederalists, but once the ratification battle was lost, they insisted on a narrow interpretation of the document’s tenets, defending it from challenge and firmly embracing what they had professed to loath. This strange transformation from fierce critic to ironclad stalwart was based on a pessimistic conception of time and organic change, an accepted nostrum in the eighteenth century. The works of English oppositionists and of classical republicanism also shaped these attitudes. The Constitution had to be preserved in its original state, for history demonstrated that alterations to a compact were often disastrous. Any modification was a loss, a sign of decay. Time seemingly changed everything for the worse, and its dictates had to be resisted, just as republicans wanted to prevent or at least delay the societal progression from an agricultural stage into a commercial stage. Broader interpretations once accepted, however harmless on their face, became binding precedents that stimulated greater and greater latitudinarianism, gradually eroding the Constitution’s parameters. In a famous Revolutionera pamphlet, John Dickinson warned against assenting to the British ministry’s rather piddling taxes because of the dangerous precedent thereby established. Acceptance of minor taxes today led to the imposition of onerous taxes tomorrow, Dickinson warned, and ultimately to an erosion of liberty. Virginia was stalwart in maintaining the Constitution as it was and no further, a belief so strong that the state’s legislature twice protested federal laws as unconstitutional. In 1790 they objected to the federal assumption of state debts, and in 1798 they protested against the Alien and Sedition Acts.11 In his Virginia childhood and youth, Tyler was surrounded by adults imbued with this republican culture, many of whom had been participants in the Revolution, a legacy of valor that men of Tyler’s generation tried hard to live up to. These men served as his instructors in life, manners, and philosophy. Foremost among them was his father. Born in 1747, John Tyler, Senior, was a friend and colleague of the Virginia heroes of the Republican and Revolutionary pantheon. He enjoyed a distinguished career as a judge, state legislator, and governor of Virginia, and his associates included Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and George Mason.12 He had a lifelong friendship with Jefferson, who was the cofounder

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and cophilosopher with Madison of the Republican party. Judge Tyler, as he was later called, and Jefferson were schoolmates at William and Mary, at one point sharing a study room. Both purportedly witnessed Patrick Henry’s eloquent and dramatic denunciation of the Stamp Act, exposure to which made Tyler a confirmed rebel. He became such an admirer of Henry that he named a son for him.13 Judge Tyler was elected as a delegate to the Virginia convention called to ratify or reject the Constitution, which met in Richmond in June, 1788. Chosen vice president of the convention, he was a determined Antifederalist and worked zealously with Patrick Henry to defeat the new government. In Tyler’s opinion, the Confederation government did not warrant drastic reform—it needed merely an impost—that is, the ability to tax imports—and the power to regulate trade. These were sufficient remedies for its flaws; granting greater powers could lead to tyranny.14 He worried that Congress, with the powers the Constitution bestowed on it, could create an army, acquire foreign aid, and place a monarch on an American throne. He thought conflict between state and federal governments inevitable under the Constitution and that the states were likely to be crushed and a consolidated government established. His fears and imagery were grounded in the Revolution experience and the lessons of eighteenth-century oppositionists and classical republicanism.15 Aided by the able leadership of James Madison, the prestige of George Washington, the known defects of the Confederation government, and fears for Virginia’s fate if she were not part of the Union, the Virginia Federalists carried the day at the convention. Judge Tyler spoke before the final vote and, perhaps cognizant of the pending outcome, said he would not be at peace until the defects of the Constitution were remedied. He voted against ratification. Richard Beeman notes that after ratification, Virginia Federalists joined Antifederalists to propose a bill of rights and twenty other amendments that if enacted would have emasculated the new government. The Virginia legislature soon issued a call for a second constitutional convention to correct the errors of the first. Beeman considered the legislature’s action “indicative of a strong aversion to the nationalists concept of union.”16 Throughout the remainder of his career, Judge Tyler continued to be a staunch Republican and an advocate of republican principles. His condemnation of the Constitution was so severe that Washington denied him a district-court appointment. He supported Jefferson and endorsed Jeffersonian policies such as the embargo. Like Jefferson, Tyler believed education was crucial to the success of a republic because it fostered the virtuous citizenry so essential to the maintenance of democracy. As governor of Virginia, Judge Tyler pushed the parsimonious Virginia

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legislature for education funds, and the Virginia Literary Fund was created largely at his behest.17 Judge Tyler distrusted commerce and embraced agriculture. Commerce had a corrupting effect on the nation, as he suggested to then Pres. James Madison: “I am at a loss to know what our national character is? Certain I am that it is not what it has been even thirty years ago. I believe it is degenerated into a system of stock-jobbing, extortion and usury.” As governor, Tyler used an annual message to deliver a jeremiad against commercial men, warning against “a too great love of money, the prevailing passion of the times, which would sacrifice the very independence of our country for a price—for a mean and degraded commerce—a commerce which never increases the wealth of any nation, without bringing into it a due proportion of the vices of other countries. It produces also what is called, in polite circles, citizens of the world—the worst citizens in the world—who, having no attachment to any country, make themselves wings to fly away with from impending danger. . . . Commerce is certainly beneficial to society, in a secondary degree; but never should it have the ascendancy over the agricultural and manufacturing interests. These are our primary objects.” The manufacturing he referred to was the simple home variety of the farm or plantation. The most virtuous citizen, the individual essential to the success of free government, was tied to the land, while those who pursued riches via paper transactions were corrupt or vulnerable to corruption. Judge Tyler never doubted these republican axioms.18 When he died in 1813, Judge Tyler’s obituary was written by Spencer Roane, the distinguished Virginia jurist, vociferous advocate of states’ rights, and fierce opponent of the nationalist decisions of Chief Justice John Marshall. Roane saluted the judge for his republican virtues: supportive of the rights of man, thoroughly republican, plain in both speech and appearance, disdainful of pomp, virtuous, as blunt in manner as a Roman statesman. Young John Tyler had to live up to this daunting legacy, the heritage of a father who had toiled side by side with Virginia’s greatest heroes in the epic struggle to blast free from the corrupt British monarchy, men who had labored to construct a virtuous republic based on noble yeomen tilling the fertile earth and expanding into the infinite wilderness to prolong the agrarian idyll.19 John Tyler, the future tenth president, was born March 29, 1790, at Greenway, the family plantation, which was located between Richmond and Williamsburg near the James River. The family property consisted of twelve hundred acres, a great house and various buildings, and thirty to forty slaves. Judge Tyler took a hand in the education of his children, insisting that their tutor be a good Republican. Lessons at home were reinforced at William and Mary College, which young Tyler entered in 1802.

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He purportedly became a protégé of Bishop James Madison, the college president. A cousin of his presidential namesake, Bishop Madison introduced the study of political economy to the college, with emphasis on works such as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Vattel’s Law of Nations. Locke, Rousseau, and Paine were also assigned to students.20 Bishop Madison believed in American exceptionalism, specifically that the United States was the pinnacle of world history. He had a rather eccentrically nationalist interpretation of that history, most likely drawn from a reading of John Locke. According to Madison, a republic had been formed after the fall of man in Eden, the people carefully ceding certain rights to the government while retaining and zealously guarding others. This ideal republic fell prey to monarchs and tyrants; human history since then had been a continuous struggle to reestablish it. Victory over tyranny was finally achieved with the American Revolution, and the virtuous republic was recreated as the United States. Providence had ordained that the new nation would redeem humanity from tyranny and oppression as its liberty-loving principles spread across the world.21 The bishop placed a strong emphasis on the importance of virtue, which could only be achieved by a strict devotion to duty. And duty, an individual’s obligations, was delineated in Christian teachings. Madison argued that happiness, virtue, and liberty were all interrelated— happiness could not exist without virtue and liberty was necessary for the cultivation of virtue. The bishop corresponded with Jefferson, with whom he shared a passion for science and for republicanism. He did not approve of Hamilton’s nationalist legislation, distrusted John Adams, and vigorously supported the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. He maintained that the state and the religious establishment ought to be separate.22 In 1859 Tyler reflected on his sojourn at William and Mary. He described the faculty as “second parents,” neither flamboyant nor harsh, moral suasion being the preferred method for correcting misbehavior. Students started each day with morning prayers and then learned science, moral law, and religion. Tyler’s classmates included men who became his political colleagues and fellow southern leaders: John J. Crittenden, William C. Rives, Benjamin Watkins Leigh, Philip P. Barbour, and William Archer.23 How profound an influence Bishop Madison and William and Mary College had on Tyler is a matter for speculation. At the very least, both must have impressed on his mind the truths of republicanism, a reverence for the Revolution as a millennial event, American exceptionalism, and the nation’s providential expansive destiny as the world’s shining star of liberty. The curricula most likely inculcated a healthy skepticism of all tendencies to consolidation and centralization that might lead to tyranny

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as well as a respect for the law and some grounding in economic theory, at least as envisioned by Adam Smith. Tyler went on to study law, tutored by his father and a relative as well as by the aging Edmund Randolph, who had played a pivotal role in the ratification battle. After this training, Tyler quickly entered politics. Carl Vipperman described the obligations of another young aristocrat, William Lowndes: “the lowcountry planters of the revolutionary generation expected their sons in due course to enter public life and assume a dual responsibility: to protect lowcountry interests from the upcountry majority in state politics, and to protect southern interests from the northern majority in the national government.” Perhaps Tyler labored under a similar sense of obligation. He and his father, then the governor of Virginia, hosted a dinner for Jefferson in Richmond in 1809 that may have been a sort of coming-out party in state politics for the younger Tyler. Subsequently elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, Tyler began his term in December, 1811. He was twenty-one years old.24 Within weeks Tyler was involved in controversy. The Virginia legislature had instructed the state’s two senators, William Branch Giles and Richard Brent, to oppose rechartering the national bank. Brent ignored the edict and voted in favor of the bank. Giles had once been Alexander Hamilton’s “chief tormentor” in the House of Representatives when Virginia united in opposition to the centralizing tendencies of his policies. Passionate to the point of recklessness and lacking the wisdom to rein in his temper, he was apt “to leap before he looked.” Giles voted as the legislature wished but then had the bad manners to condemn the doctrine of instruction on the Senate floor. He argued that a legislature could not instruct or essentially order a senator to vote a certain way; all it could properly offer was advice. Instruction was mob rule, allowing popular passions and ephemeral public opinion to reign, conceivably fatal to a republic.25 Instruction predated the Revolution. During the eighteenth century, Massachusetts towns, for example, had typically instructed their representatives on how to vote at the General Court. Instruction then was another method of insulating the all-to-fallible representative from the artful influence of the colonial governor or the Crown. It ensured that the people’s wishes, not those of the colonial administration, were carried out. To defend this hoary republican principle, Tyler introduced his first major initiative, a censure resolution against the two wayward senators, an act fraught with meaning given his future path and a rather bold measure for a young member. The man later famous (or infamous) for the rigidity of his opinions began his career by vociferously condemning two men who failed to meet his high republican standards. Tyler’s motion stated that a representative was obligated to obey his state legislature’s instructions unless doing so would violate the Constitution. The so-called doctrine of

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instruction was not explicitly in the Constitution, but Tyler declared it could be inferred, a peculiarly inconsistent liberal interpretation for an avowed strict constructionist. Tyler’s resolution was eventually dropped in favor of a substitute Benjamin W. Leigh proposed that condemned the two senators and included a prefatory exposition on the doctrine. This was passed in February, 1812. Tyler thus began his political career by affirming a fundamental republican tenet: the delegate to the national assembly was subservient to the wishes of the state legislature and thus insulated from the malign influence of the national administration.26 Tyler ascended to the national government in 1816. John Clopton, the congressman of Tyler’s home district, had been in poor health for some time and finally passed away on September 11, 1816. A special election was called to fill his seat. Tyler decided to run and was opposed by the like-minded Andrew Stevenson, then speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates; Tyler bested Stevenson by a narrow margin. At age twenty-six, Tyler journeyed to the national capital.27 He became a member of the second session of the Fourteenth Congress on Tuesday, December 17, 1816. The seat of the national government still bore the scars of the late war, although they were disappearing fast. On August 24, 1814, a mixed American force of militia and regulars had ingloriously fled before British troops, leaving the capital to the notso-tender mercies of the invaders, who put government and other buildings to the torch. Local wags referred to the battle as the “Bladensburg Races,” with the militiamen competing to put the most distance between themselves and the victorious redcoats. The Capitol, President’s Mansion, and War and Treasury Departments were among the offices burned, the British justifying the atrocity as payback for American misdeeds in Canada. Patriotic citizens subsequently constructed a temporary meeting place for Congress that was made of brick and rather unimaginatively dubbed “Brick Capitol.” A new capitol building was reoccupied in 1819, although it was not completed until later.28 Tyler settled in and was soon invited to dinner at the president’s residence. While he revered Madison and found the president’s wife, Dolly, charming, Tyler could not stomach the rich, sauce-laden French cooking typically served at the executive residence. Ever the good republican, Tyler told his wife he much preferred her plain, hearty fare to the “flumflummeries” of a presidential banquet.29 The Fourteenth Congress was a talented assemblage, one of the most gifted of the nineteenth century. Nearly forty years later, in a speech to the Maryland Mechanics’ Institute, Tyler remembered the luminaries who then graced Washington. John Randolph was “Blazing like a comet through the heavens, . . . throwing off scintillations of wit and genius.” The eccentric Virginian would stride into the House chamber wearing

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riding boots with spurs still affixed and brandishing a riding crop. Daniel Webster, then a representative from New Hampshire, possessed a “broad and expansive intellect” but had little opportunity to exercise it “as it was engaged in sustaining a cause which at the time had sunk into hopeless minority,” that is, Federalism. John Calhoun was able to condense ideas like “that of a lens by which the rays of light are brought to a focus.” Among the Virginia delegation, Henry St. George Tucker, Daniel Sheffey, and Philip Barbour were famed for their prowess in debate.30 Tyler saved his most glowing tribute for the man who became his implacable foe. Henry Clay, as usual elected Speaker, “seemed formed for the station.” “Nature had bestowed upon him in profusion her gifts. . . . [Clay] added to an intellect of the highest order a commanding person, and his voice and gesture and manner were those best calculated to sway the action of a popular assembly.”31 Clay was indeed a brilliant man, elected Speaker of the House of Representatives in his first term. Like many men of genius, he displayed dazzling gifts and equally dazzling, and startling, character flaws. While in Europe, he charmed and delighted French royalty, earning the nickname “Prince Hal.” He could defuse personal animosity with a brief conversation but could also be arrogant and vicious. When angered, Clay unleashed a “foulmouth” and a “scornful sneer” that cut deep. He was a visionary statesman who could also stoop to the lowest of political deals to advance his cause. Elegant and poised, he was ever the favorite of the ladies while conversing in the drawing room with a festive goblet of chilly champagne in hand. Yet he loved a coarse dusk-to-dawn stag bacchanalia of drinking, card playing, and carousing. Clay’s overarching goal in life was the presidency. Tyler witnessed Clay’s first foray in that ultimately unsuccessful quest.32 A number of nationalist measures had passed in the first session of the Fourteenth Congress, adopted to remedy problems that became evident during the War of 1812. Most of the Virginia congressional delegation did not support them; a majority voted against the tariff and against the Second Bank of the United States. Southern congressmen opposed the tariff thirty-four to twenty-three. Thomas Jefferson captured the mood of many southern Republicans: “Like a dropsical man calling out for water, water, our deluded citizens are clamoring for more banks, more banks.” Americans were in “that state of fever” that preceded great financial debacles like “England was under the South Sea bubble.”33 Virginia, with its districts gerrymandered to overwhelmingly favor the East, was uneasy with the new nationalism. Harry Ammon has noted that east coast planters had no incentive to support legislation, like internal improvements, that would benefit competing western regions already blest with soil of greater fertility than eastern Virginia. Another historian

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has suggested that the South was beginning to fall uncomfortably and progressively behind in modernization vis-à-vis the North. Some have argued that Virginia agriculture was in decline. All told, the era was not one of “good feelings” as is clear from public reaction to the Compensation Act of 1816, a harbinger of troubles and political reform to come.34 On March 8, 1816, a bill proposed by Richard Johnson, war hero and alleged killer of Tecumseh, passed eighty-one to sixty-seven. It raised the remuneration for congressmen from $6 per day to a whopping salary of $1,500 per session. The result was electrifying. Johnson himself concluded, “The poor compensation bill excited more discontent than the alien or sedition laws, the quasi war with France, the internal taxes of 1798, the embargo, the late war with Great Britain, the Treaty of Ghent, or any one measure of the Government, from its existence.” A wave of voter anger broached and came crashing down on the heads of the stunned representatives, remarkable for its relative spontaneity, although many newspapers had brought the pay increase to the public’s attention. The agitation was truly a grassroots phenomenon. Jefferson, who approved of periodic revolution, was “highly pleased” with “the innate good sense, the vigilance, and the determination of the people to act for themselves.” He had never seen “an instant before of so unanimous an opinion of the people . . . through every State in the Union.” He predicted a big turnover of members: “Almost [the] entire mass will go out . . . The next Congress, will be almost wholly new members.”35 Congressmen were left fighting the political battles of their careers, regardless of how they voted; many simply retired rather than endure inescapable defeat. Clay’s district was in an uproar. Not only had he voted for the pay raise but he also supported the chartering of the Second Bank of the United States, an institution he had once condemned. Clay was a “pariah” in Kentucky. He was forced to backpedal on the pay raise, admitting it was a mistake and pledging to repeal the Compensation Act. Calhoun was one of the few who voted in favor, refused to alter his position, and was reelected. When the storm ended, one-half of Senate and two-thirds of House members had been replaced.36 The issue was ideal for a newly elected, young Republican congressman possessed of a fervent belief in the doctrine of instruction, especially so since the debate came to center on the validity of that very doctrine. The American people were furious and insisted that the fat congressional wage increase be relinquished. Were members required to obey?37 Proponents contended that inflation had so reduced the value of the old per-diem rate that congressmen struggled with the typically inflated prices of the capital. Decent remuneration was indispensable for attracting talent, particularly from the middle class, lest the House be comprised solely of two unattractive groups: the rich, those “purse-proud nabobs”

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who alone could afford the expense, and the office seekers, “fawning sycophants” willing to do the executive’s bidding for the promise of preferment. It was argued with a republican twist that every dollar given to a House member was a preventative against wicked executive patronage and influence.38 As state legislatures passed resolutions ordering members to vote the increase down, many felt compelled to cast a repeal vote regardless of their personal predilections. Thomas Grosvenor of New York vociferously argued that it was “repugnant.” He declared that the Constitution specifically ceded the power to legislate to the Congress. The wise Founders provided checks on the power of each government branch—and one such check was subjecting representatives to regular elections. A representative was entitled to exercise his own good judgment and conscience, and if the people disliked his decisions, they had recourse in frequent elections. While not independent of the people, he should be interested in their opinion, but his subordination was limited to that outlined in the Constitution. Obligating a representative to obey instructions would leave him perpetually glancing back at the district to see which way the “political weathercock” was pointed. The benefits of a representative republic were thereby squandered. Grosvenor cited as authority the English statesmen William Pitt, Edmund Burke, and Charles Fox, all opponents of instruction. A representative who obeyed instructions surrendered judgment, conscience, independence, and became an “automaton” controlled by demagogues who artfully manipulated public opinion. “I would sooner be a dog, and bay the moon, than such a representative,” Grosvenor fiercely avowed.39 Tyler approached the compensation debate eagerly, possessed of the sang-froid instilled by a patriot father and a republican upbringing. His argument touched on rhetorical lodestones that typified speeches throughout his career such as a concern with the corruptibility of the Congress, constitutional literalism, and the lessons of the Revolution. Addressing the House, Tyler stated he had not come into that body “on the tide of popular declamation” but had been elected to replace a deceased predecessor. Thus, Tyler immediately asserted his independence and disinterestedness, important republican attributes; his election was not the product of popular passion but of sober reflection upon Clopton’s death. Neither had he pursued the post, rather the office sought him, in keeping with the injunctions in the essay “Character of a Good and of an Evil Magistrate” as reprinted in Cato’s Letters, number 37. While every congressman hoped to win the approbation of both contemporaries and posterity, the way to accomplish that was not “a low, grovelling, mean pursuit of popular favor.” He compared popularity to a coquette—the more it was pursued, the more elusive it became. It was better to pursue “a

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steady, firm, and uniform course, not at variance with the rights of the people.” Somewhat paradoxically then, Tyler began an argument in favor of legislative responsiveness to public opinion with an affirmation of his own indifference to it. Besides acting in a virtuous republican manner, Tyler’s caveat reflected the ambivalence of the planter elite, from which he had emerged, to an unfettered democratic society.40 Tyler contended the doctrine of instruction was one of his countrymen’s “greatest rights,” and although a bit awed to be crossing rhetorical swords with more experienced members, he felt his constituents would rightly charge him with “treason” if he did not speak. In a telling remark Tyler declared that, though a young man, he was “old fashioned in his politics,” conceding thereby that he looked to the past for political and intellectual sustenance and inspiration. He stated that if a representative spoke for himself alone, he had ceased to be a representative. From the very meaning of that term, an obligation to obey instructions was evident.41 Representatives had to heed just about any instructions unless doing so violated the Constitution, for that sacred text was a higher authority. To those who argued that the doctrine was not in the Constitution, Tyler answered with a riposte enshrined in the Resolutions of 1798, to wit, that those powers not enumerated in the Constitution were retained by the states and the people. The right of instruction had never been surrendered. Touching another republican theme, Tyler warned that the Compensation Act could establish a dangerous precedent—in future, politicians might ignore the wishes of the people and vote themselves fantastic emoluments. He responded to his opponents’ praise of Pitt and Burke by touting Algernon Sidney as a wellspring of worthy maxims, a martyr to freedom “who had consecrated his principles by his blood.”42 Tyler believed the British failure to consult the colonists and then to ignore colonial objections to increased taxation had been a kind of flouting of instructions. He may have recalled as well the crown’s efforts to take control of official salaries from colonial assemblies. The doctrine of instruction was “consecrated by the Revolution.” Look to the Revolution, he tasked those who proposed to abjure public opinion on the Compensation Act.43 Moving from the ideological to the practical, Tyler attacked the act on its merits. A massive debt had been run up during the late war, and a retrenchment of government expenditures was imperative. Citizens were plagued by tax collectors hungrily prowling the countryside and were left wondering “why, at a time that retrenchment was necessary, Congress should have increased their wages.” Tyler recognized that this was an illtimed measure and suggested that Congress lessen the people’s burden before seeing to its own comfort.44

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After two weeks of debate, the House on January 31, 1817, voted 138 to 27 to repeal the Compensation Act. Tyler voted with the majority, upholding the doctrine of instruction as he had done in Virginia. C. Edward Skeen gushed, “American politics was never the same again.” The compensation battle foreshadowed Jacksonian democracy, although Tyler would not have seen it as such. He was defending not mob rule, but a principle of the hallowed Revolution, the right of the people to set the salaries of officialdom by so instructing their representatives. The crown’s attempt to remove official salaries from the province of colonial assemblies had once excited much controversy. Perhaps he drew as well upon the warning legacy of Sir Robert Walpole’s corruption of Parliament in the eighteenth century as described in the works of Trenchard, Gordon, and others. Instruction helped ensure that the representative obeyed the people’s dictates, not the corrupt inducements of the executive. In this debate he convincingly demonstrated his mastery of republican principles.45 On December 16, 1816, John Calhoun proposed the creation of a committee to study the feasibility of directing dividends and a bonus payment from the national bank to internal improvements. The resolution passed unanimously and Calhoun chaired the committee. It returned with a bill, the Bonus Bill, that accomplished the proposed objectives— dividends and the bonus payment were directed to internal improvements. This measure passed the House by two votes on February 9, 1817, eighty-six to eighty-four. Tyler voted against it, and the legislation was later vetoed by President Madison on March 3, the veto message constituting a kind of farewell to the American people from Madison as he departed the presidency.46 Unsurprisingly, good republican John Tyler took a dim view of national internal improvements. He explained his vote in a February circular to his constituents: strict construction of the Constitution prohibited the Bonus Bill. “Congress have no power under the Constitution to interfere with the police of the States.” Further, proud Virginia did not need the federal government’s help, “I was not disposed to represent the State of Virginia in so poor a condition as to require a charitable donation from Congress.” Tyler wanted any surplus to be applied to reduce the national debt. “The day, it is to be hoped, has passed, in which a national debt was esteemed a national blessing; and he, who, with the example of England before him, entertains such a doctrine, denies to himself the exercise of his mental faculties.” Tyler had the republican distaste for debt as a dangerous phenomenon to be shunned. His doctrinaire republicanism is striking.47 Tyler met his first political challenges in a manner one suspects his late father would have heartily approved—as a stern, even rigid, republican

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determined to defend the legacy and vision bequeathed to him by his glorious predecessors. His upbringing and heritage vouchsafed him an interpretive framework through which he could judge legislation and events, a ready guide for a young, earnest representative anxious to do his duty. He would rely on these lessons in the face of even greater challenges to come.

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Defending the Republican Vision When James Monroe was elected president in 1816, speculation began almost immediately concerning the composition of his cabinet. Henry Clay had participated in the successful negotiations leading to the Treaty of Ghent and saw himself as the natural choice for secretary of state, at that time the great stepping stone to the presidency. He had prospered at diplomacy, and in his view the West was overdue for a chance at the Executive Mansion. Clay’s letters at the time reveal a preoccupation with cabinet selections, boredom with Congress, and much annoyance at suggestions that the experienced diplomat John Quincy Adams was ideal for secretary of state. Monroe was placed in a difficult position. The current secretary of the treasury, William Crawford of Georgia, also coveted the post. Faced with a Hobson’s choice between warring Clay and Crawford factions, Monroe tried to avoid trouble by selecting the favorite of neither group. He nominated John Quincy Adams. Monroe’s biographer argues that the new president hoped to break the cycle of succeeding to the presidency from the State Department. He hoped also not to alienate either Clay or Crawford partisans, who might otherwise instantly assume the role of an organized opposition to the new administration. To placate Crawford, Monroe retained him at the Treasury. Clay was offered the War Department.1 Monroe’s plan failed. Adams returned to become secretary of state and soon evolved into the leading contender for the succession, a rather remarkable turn given his prolonged absence overseas and lack of a political following. Crawford agreed to remain at the Treasury, but with

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Adams’s ascension to probable presidential successor, Crawford became embittered and gleefully intrigued behind the scenes with Monroe’s congressional critics. Clay refused the War Department post since it was inferior to Crawford’s position at Treasury. Furious, he embarked on a nasty verbal war with the Monroe administration, beginning a pattern of conflict against sitting presidents that would become a hallmark of his career. Within a year, the acerbic Adams would grouse in his journal: “Clay expected himself to have been Secretary of State, and he and all his creatures were disappointed by my appointment. He is therefore coming out as the head of a new opposition in Congress to Mr. Monroe’s administration, and he makes no Scruples of giving the tone to all his party in running me down.” John Tyler watched as Clay chose an issue, South America, and attempted to use it against the Monroe administration. The battle would be joined in the Fifteenth Congress.2 Tyler once more defeated Andrew Stevenson for election to the House in 1816. At the first session of the Fifteenth Congress, three important issues preoccupied Tyler: internal improvements, a uniform bankruptcy law, and U.S. relations with South America. Clay began verbally bludgeoning the Monroe administration using South America as the cudgel, accusing it of moving too slowly to recognize the independence of South American countries fighting for freedom from Spanish domination, a struggle he described as evocative of the American Revolution. It was a convenient issue for Clay as it combined conviction with political opportunism. On December 6, 1817, Adams wrote, “Clay’s project is that in which John Randolph failed, to control or overthrow the Executive by swaying the House of Representatives.” At a Christmas Eve dinner at Crawford’s home, the Speaker denounced Monroe’s policy: “Clay came out with great violence against the course pursued by the Executive upon South American affairs. . . . Clay is as rancorously benevolent as John Randolph. He has taken his stand of opposition from the first day of the session, and his object is evidently to make grounds for it.” Clay himself wrote at this time, “the subject of the Independence of Spanish America, in which I take a lively interest, may possibly lead to the formation of new political sects.” He hoped to ride South America to political glory.3 The Virginia representative took a dim view of Clay’s legislative proposal on South America. Clay introduced an $18,000 appropriation for a minister to La Plata, although Monroe had yet to propose such an appointment. The Speaker was accused of usurping the president’s control of foreign policy, and Tyler voted with a majority of the House to overwhelmingly defeat this measure, 115 to 45. Before sanctioning the dispatch of a minister, Tyler wanted to know more about the revolutionaries who had overthrown the regimes of the decrepit Spanish Empire. Were they true republicans? If so, they deserved American support, although

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Tyler worried that any assistance might provoke Britain into an alliance with Spain that would frustrate the fight for liberty and ultimately lead to a wider conflict.4 Tyler also was concerned at Clay’s attempt to poach on presidential powers. The House “was adopting a new and unusual course—and had the appearance . . . of being introduced for the purpose of stimulating the President to the discharge of his duty, when I could discern no remissness on his part, but do believe that his course . . . has been dictated by wisdom.” Tyler reminded the House of Monroe’s distinguished career as a patriot and hero of the Revolution and as a diplomat of considerable experience. The president had devoted his life to the cause of liberty and was not one to ignore the plight of South American patriots, but he possessed the wisdom to await the most propitious moment for intervention. Tyler preferred to leave the matter in Monroe’s capable hands. So future president John Tyler opposed Henry Clay’s blatant attempt to wrest foreign policy from its rightful province and create an issue on which to base a presidential run. Clay challenged President Monroe on foreign policy much as he later challenged President Tyler on bank policy. And Tyler responded as a young congressman much the same as he would as president—with a ringing affirmation of republicanism. Maintaining the separation of the branches as the Constitution mandated was vital lest one branch dominate the others. Such a damaging violation of constitutional limitations would destroy that sacred text, an unacceptable outcome. Republican ideology dictated Tyler’s response to Clay’s gambit.5 In the Fifteenth Congress Tyler again opposed internal improvements. A debate ensued over whether Congress possessed such a power; a resolution to that effect had been proposed. He thought proponents of internal improvements were stretching the parameters of the Constitution in a threatening manner by giving Congress, in effect, a blank appropriations check. Tyler wrote: “The states invested the general government with certain specified powers, which investiture it became necessary to make for purposes of general welfare and national defense. It was obvious, however, that these specific powers could not be carried into effect, without also conferring the power of raising money—The power of raising money was intended, therefore, only as a mean of carrying the other powers into effect, and its legitimate expenditure may be tested by reference to the objects for which the power to raise it was given. . . . If the power of unlimited appropriation be conceded, it would be extremely difficult to fix any limitation to the powers of the national government.” Clay expressed the contrary supposition: “We view the Constitution, however, with different eyes; he considers everything gained to the States from the General Government as something snatched from a foreign Power. I consider it as a Government co-ordinate with them, and the true

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construction, I think, is to give to it all that vigor and vitality which rightfully belong to it.” Clay’s “vigor and vitality” implied a liberal construction of the Constitution that Tyler could never accept. Weakening the Constitution by elastic interpretations could lead to excessive power, which its constraints were designed to prevent. He again advanced an argument predicated on an extreme constitutional literalism, the same ground taken in the Resolutions of 1798, and voted against the bill.6 Tyler also took exception to a proposal for a uniform bankruptcy law. He evinced discomfort with what he perceived as a form of legal chicanery that enabled a man to shirk the payment of his rightful debts. This seemed immoral to Tyler. Proponents argued that since the Constitution permitted a bankruptcy law, the Congress was bound to enact one. Merchants ran peculiar risks, their cargoes traveling the seas on hazardous voyages uncertain of completion, and were therefore entitled to unique protection. Tyler responded that logic dictated that Congress not enact legislation harmful to the country even if the Constitution permitted the legislation. And the bankruptcy law was harmful. It granted privileges to an exclusive group—merchants—while ignoring other worthy interests—farmers, manufacturers, and mechanics, for example. These groups were an integral part of the merchants’ operations—both the manufacturer and farmer supplied products to him—yet in Tyler’s view the bill did nothing for them. He felt laws should embrace the entire community.7 Tyler declared that the prudent trader kept a reserve for emergencies, but if financial disaster nonetheless occurred, an honorable merchant would implacably vow to pay off his debts and could in turn expect a measure of leniency from gentlemanly creditors. Thus the honest trader had no need for this legislation, and Tyler had “never heard a whisper” or plea for its enactment from Richmond merchants. A bankruptcy act would only assist the “bold, dashing, and thoughtless adventurer” who took flight on “paper wings” and whose irresponsible career could continue indefinitely under the bill’s protections.8 The British bankruptcy law was the model for this legislation, and this connection provoked Tyler’s ever-present Anglophobia. He contended that Britain’s embrace of such a law had left it riddled with insolvency and burdened by costly and time-consuming litigation. Grafting a Britishstyle bankruptcy law onto the United States would introduce fraud on an unprecedented scale, and fraud was antithetical to republican government. “A republican Government can only be supported by virtue; and the end of all our legislation should be to encourage our fellow citizens in its daily practice,” Tyler avowed. Jefferson or Bishop Madison could not have stated it better. Tyler expressed a libertarian view of the relationship between government and commerce: “Leave men, then, sir, to follow the

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dictates of their own integrity, and your course will accord with the admonitions of policy and wisdom.”9 Tyler’s opposition to the bankruptcy bill was characterized by themes he stressed throughout his career: sectionalism, republicanism, personal honor, and an Anglophobia that was very much a product of his Virginia heritage and upbringing. He worried that the act benefited an exclusive class at the expense of others, but the larger issue was that it helped the North while doing little for the South. Bills like this were notable for their import—the other sections of the Union were prepared to advance their interests in the national body, and these interests often conflicted with those of the South. This became increasingly evident during Tyler’s House tenure. He, by contrast, saw nothing wrong with advancing legislation that benefited the South exclusively; for example, he supported an act that strengthened the fugitive slave law. The northern emphasis on broad construction of the Constitution and modernist legislation like a bankruptcy law seemed especially threatening.10 Tyler’s concept of commerce was based on eighteenth-century standards. Gentlemen concluded agreements and did not risk more than they could afford to lose, but if they nonetheless had the misfortune to be caught short, they were granted more time to repay, which they always did. Honor demanded no less. Tyler’s ideal world operated at a slower pace, preferred specie to unreliable paper as a medium of exchange, and regarded commerce as something to be tolerated rather than celebrated, unlike agriculture, which created real products of real value as well as virtuous citizens. This traditional Virginia ambivalence to the commercial world and the merchants who inhabited it was rooted in the planters’ humbling dependency on the British factors who handled their crops. Jefferson claimed that British merchants initially granted lenient credit terms for crops to ensnare unsuspecting planters into debt before ratcheting up prices to lock them into a perpetual dependency relationship from which it was impossible to emerge without parting with land or slaves. This irritating tie produced an Anglophobia that afflicted Tyler, and he consequently could never support a measure that benefited only merchants, which thus united the twin goblins of his Virginia prejudices.11 With the advent of the second session of the Fifteenth Congress, Tyler was forced to confront an institution that every republican fiber of his being destined him to hate: the Second Bank of the United States. The event that led to Tyler’s confrontation was a severe depression known as the Panic of 1819. This contraction had many causes. After the War of 1812, prices remained high, even increasing for certain staples like cotton. Trade also remained strong. These factors fueled the settlement of new lands in the

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Mississippi Valley. Land speculation was spurred on by both the easy credit policies of the government’s Land Act and the Second Bank of the United States.12 Unfortunately, the bank was not under competent management. It began operations in 1817, and its new president, William Jones, possessed a rather curious qualification for operating what was in effect the country’s central bank: he had recently been forced to declare personal bankruptcy. In addition, the directors of the bank were corrupt, wild, and reckless. Bray Hammond described them and the generational change taking place: “The sober pace of 18th century business was giving way, on the wave of laisser faire and the Industrial Revolution, to a democratic passion to get rich quick—an ambition which America seemed designed by Providence to promote. And it was men imbued with this passion and the unscrupulousness appropriate to it who had snatched control of the Bank of the United States.” The bank waived the rule requiring investors to purchase stock with a certain percentage of specie, accepting unsecured notes instead. As a result, the level of specie reserve required by the bank charter was never achieved. Meanwhile, branch banks were permitted to lend as though they had credit access to the entire national bank’s reserves. Credit came far too easy, irresponsibly so, and land speculation assumed a frenetic pace. The economy rested upon a bed of sand (to borrow a biblical metaphor) rather than a sound foundation. A severe correction loomed as a distinct possibility.13 The contraction began in 1818 when prices fell in Britain, a product of deflationary pressure as the ministry built up specie reserves depleted during the Napoleonic Wars, and continued on a long downward spiral. In the South cotton prices fell dramatically; cotton trading at thirty-five cents per pound at the beginning of 1818 was below ten cents per pound by 1823. The South was battered, expansion into the Mississippi Valley soon ceased, and bankruptcies mounted. In the face of this, the national bank was forced to call in loans and obligations to protect itself. This was the precise opposite of the correct role a central bank should assume in a recession, which is to expand its lending to halt the hemorrhaging, inspire investor confidence, and stimulate economic growth.14 The suffering was widespread, especially in the South. Thomas Jefferson’s fate was typical. Having had the ill-advised generosity to cosign notes for friends and relatives, the Sage of Monticello was caught short when they defaulted. In a letter to Hugh Nelson, Jefferson described the mess: “This state is in a condition of unparalleled distress. The sudden reduction of the circulating medium from a plethory to all but annihilation is producing an entire revolution of fortune. . . . Lands sold by the sheriff for one year’s rent . . . , good slaves selling for one hundred dollars, good horses for five dollars. . . . Our produce is now selling

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at market for one-third of its price, before this commercial catastrophe. . . . I fear local insurrections against these horrible sacrifices of property.” Jefferson’s son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph was eventually forced to liquidate his plantation, and Jefferson was basically ruined as well; he died leaving a debt of over $100,000.15 Many blamed the national bank for the economic downturn, and Congress decided to examine its operations, an indication of popular disenchantment. On November 25, 1818, John Spencer of New York proposed the creation of an investigatory committee charged with discovering possible violations of the bank charter; it was empowered to meet in Philadelphia, where the main bank was located, with staff and to take as much time as necessary. Tyler joined the House that same day. Five days later, that chamber approved the investigating committee, and Tyler was appointed along with Spencer as chairman, William Lowndes, Louis McLane, and Joseph Bryan. Following the descriptions of Lowndes’s biographer of committee members, Spencer was antibank, while Tyler and Bryan were conservatives and therefore either antibank or predisposed in that direction; McLane and Lowndes had earlier defended the bank.16 The committee repaired to Philadelphia to investigate the “monster.” The process was, for Tyler, exhausting. He complained of lengthy committee meetings and struggles with the intricacies of finance: “To be placed in a situation of novelty and great responsibility; to have to wade through innumerable and huge folios in order to attain the objects of our enquiry; to have money calculations to make; and perplex one’s self with all the seeming mysteries of bank terms, operations and exchanges—the strongest mind becomes relaxed and the imagination sickens and almost expires.” Tyler professed to be keeping an open mind until the investigation concluded, but it was hard to imagine someone more predisposed by personal heritage and beliefs to dislike the bank.17 Indeed, in the same letter wherein he promised to remain dispassionately objective, written as the committee began work, Tyler criticized the bank and implicitly the entire nationalist agenda in strong republican terms: Our wise men flattered us into the adoption of the banking system under the idea that boundless wealth would result from the adoption. Nature improved by art was to put on a more fascinating appearance. Mountains were to sink beneath the charm, and distant climates by means of canals, were to be locked in sweet embraces. Industry and enterprise were to be afforded new theatres of action, and the banks, like Midas, were to turn every thing into gold. The dream, however, is over,—instead of riches, penury walks the streets of our towns, and bankruptcy knocks at every man’s door. They promised us blessings,

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and have given us sorrows; for the substance they have given the shadow; for gold and silver, rags and paper. The delusion is over, however, and although the medicine will produce sickness almost to death, yet we may still hope for health when the operation is over. If this was an open mind, what would a closed mind be? Tyler reflected the republican suspicion of the paper transactions and speculative loans that were a banking mainstay. Republicans believed the creation of wealth was best if based on virtuous labor that produced real products; agriculture was the preferable model. Paper transactions were somehow dishonest, even illusory—nothing tangible was created, little virtuous labor was involved, and the resulting profits were not only tainted but also likely to be employed in the purchase of luxuries that corrupted the republican character. He implied that the banking system was a tampering with the natural order, with the age-old manner of living and working, and with the natural progression of society. The national bank’s promises to figuratively move mountains were delusional and brought forth not riches but bankruptcy. Tyler seemed somehow satisfied with that unfortunate outcome, perhaps because he believed it was wrong to tamper with the natural order to circumvent the virtuous, more time-consuming, and work-intensive production of wealth. Spurring societal progression so that the virtuous agricultural stage was left behind was not desirable. The depression was nature’s or God’s way of demonstrating the folly of men attempting to alter the natural order. And Tyler could not forget his father’s losses to bogus paper notes and his unrelenting suspicion of the Hamiltonian program. His opposition to the bank was quite near a foregone conclusion.18 The committee wrapped up its probe and presented a report to the House on January 16, 1819, having uncovered four serious violations of the charter, including corruption by bank directors. Spencer later introduced rather anemic reform measures, but Tyler’s verdict was more stringent. He thought the national bank should forfeit its charter. To do that Tyler proposed placing the charter violations before a court by serving the bank a scire facias writ. In the ensuing judicial proceeding, the bank would have to show cause on why it should continue to operate in the face of repeated charter violations. Norman Risjord suggests that Tyler preferred this course because outright repeal of the charter might be a violation of the contract with the bank; Tyler was influenced by the recent Dartmouth College Supreme Court case on the sanctity of contracts. The judicial process also would take time, allowing the bank to gradually wind down its operations, which might lessen the economic impact of its demise. Tyler often showed a willingness throughout his career to embrace compromises that achieved his legislative objectives gradually.19

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Tyler had concluded the national bank should be abolished. “What think you of our banking gentry?” he wrote a friend. “Did you dream that we had been visited with so much corruption? I shall vote a scire facias, and am almost ready to vote a positive repeal of the charter, without awaiting a judicial decision.” He elaborated on these views in a lengthy speech begun Saturday, February 20, 1819, having the regrettable luck to rise immediately after William Lowndes delivered what his biographer considers his greatest speech in defense of the bank. In the face of Lowndes’s oratory, Tyler chose to begin with a defiant avowal of his independence, a refusal to truckle to public opinion. He had recently submitted a constituents’ petition from widows and orphans whose savings were tied up in the bank, begging Congress to do it no harm. Tyler refused to be swayed. “I can, . . . neither look to the right nor the left—my own personal popularity can have no influence over me, when the dictates of my best judgment, and the obligations of an oath, require of me a particular course. Under such circumstances, whether I sink or swim on the tide of popular favor, is to me a matter of inferior consideration.” He was publicly declaring his disinterestedness, that valued republican attribute, as well as what was called “Roman firmness,” so appealing to classically educated men like Tyler and many political contemporaries. “Roman firmness” meant that Tyler intended to abide by and adhere to his own conclusions and convictions regardless of popular storms. And he was dead set against the bank.20 He called the report he had helped compile a “long catalogue of crime” and denounced the bank in tones on occasion strikingly similar to those Andrew Jackson would employ when he took on the Monster of Chestnut Street thirteen years later. The bank had engaged in “practices calculated only to pamper the few, at the expense of the many”; its charter had been “shamefully perverted” to facilitate “stockjobbing and speculation.” Gold and silver had been converted to “worthless trash.” Tyler described some of what he considered the more egregious charter violations: enormous loans lavished on an influential few, directors flouting the rules, and profligate drafts from the bank’s Baltimore branch. Tyler rashly ascribed the inception of the entire depression to the inability of the main Philadelphia bank to control the Baltimore branch’s irresponsible actions, a theory that required too great a leap of faith to be plausible. The economic crisis was an international phenomenon of labyrinthine commercial and governmental interrelationships that would not admit of a single cause. But Tyler held the bank responsible for the country’s ongoing malaise, and he provided concrete examples of improper deeds committed by bank officers, concluding that forfeiture of the charter was the sole remedy. His argument was thus typically ideological and practical.21

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The national bank was antithetical not only to his political principles but also to his view of the world. Its creation had been unconstitutional, and his oath to defend and protect that great document required him to repair any breach in it. He abhorred what the bank represented. “For one, I enter my protest against the Banking system; a system not to be supported by any correct principles of political economy. A gross delusion— the dream of a visionary—a system which has done more to corrupt the morals of society than anything else—which has introduced a struggle for wealth, instead of that honorable struggle which governs the actions of a patriot, and makes ambition virtue; which has made the husbandman spurn his cottage, and introduced a spirit of luxury at variance with the simplicity of our institutions.” Reflected here are beliefs anchored in the eighteenth century: an organic conception of national growth, a classical republican preference for virtuous labor in the soil that brings forth real products and honest citizens, and an abhorrence of the paper profits of speculation that render citizens effete and corrupt with a pronounced taste for the frivolous baubles, the luxuries, of manufactures. “Instead of a system abounding in blessings, it has been converted into an instrument of corruption. Cold unfeeling speculation has usurped the place of honest dealing. Are we not too young to encourage such a state of things? Our Republic can only be preserved by a strict adherence to virtue. It is our duty, if we consult our eternal good, to put down this first instance of detected corruption, and thereby to preserve ourselves from its contamination.” Tyler was implicitly hinting that the bank’s corruption was analogous to the corporate corruption that blossomed in eighteenth-century Britain, of which the South Sea Company was the prime example, a firm whose officials had also engaged in speculative financial chicanery. Members of the government and Parliament were also implicated. Malodorous corruption on this scale was appropriate for a nation in a more advanced stage of development, perhaps characterized as decay, which was the condition of Great Britain according to American republicans. Tyler believed the United States “too young” for corporate corruption—it had not reached that stage of organic progression—and millions of acres of land beckoned for settlement by thousands of newly minted, virtuous yeomen. Better to stamp out this first case of Walpolean graft emerging in the verdant paradise like an ugly gray toadstool and pursue an expansive destiny that prolonged the virtuous pastoral idyll, which in turn delayed the inexorable societal progression to a more advanced and, sadly, corrupt stage of national development. Tyler spoke of the bank as one might a plague. It threatened that one quality every republican regarded as absolutely essential—virtue. The bank was a corrupting beast that the safety of the Republic demanded be put to death.22 Another issue emerged that for Tyler was right out of Cato’s Letters. “An

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arbitrary Power in a single Person had made greater Havock in human Nature, and thinned Mankind more, than all the Beasts of Prey and all the Plagues and Earthquakes that ever were,” Cato had warned. A principal theme of the eighteenth-century oppositionists and of classical republicanism was the menace of dictatorship, the dictator coming in the guise of a military leader as had Julius Caesar. Gen. Andrew Jackson’s bold invasion of Spanish Florida in 1818 without congressional sanction startled many republicans, who feared that a potential oppressor had arisen. Merrill Peterson called it “a textbook case of the dangers of Caesarism to the republic.”23 Seminole warriors staged bloody raids across the border of Spanish Florida and into American territory, which prompted Georgia settlers to howl for protection. The close proximity of an international boundary also acted as a magnet that drew runaway slaves who stole across the border and were lost. The decrepit remnants of the Spanish Empire in Florida lacked the power to either police the border or contain the Seminoles. Monroe had tried to grab Florida while secretary of state under Madison, and he resumed that design by ordering the fiery Jackson to take command of troops operating against the Seminoles. Vague orders were issued that gave full vent to Jackson’s natural aggressiveness, amounting to tacit approval of border violations.24 By March, 1818, Jackson had crossed into Florida with a formidable army, moving west from the Apalachicola River and burning Indian villages as he went. He captured the Spanish stronghold of St. Marks and later turned west and occupied the capital of Spanish Florida, Pensacola. Along the way Jackson seized two British citizens, Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister, both accused of assisting the Seminole marauders. They were tried by court-martial, sentenced to death, and executed. Jackson argued the invasion was justified because the Spanish had failed to police the territory as obligated by treaty and had consequently surrendered their right to possess Florida. When Ambrister and Arbuthnot joined a band of cutthroats, they forfeited their British citizenship and associated protections and became subject to the treatment accorded pirates.25 In summary, without explicit orders, Jackson had warred on a foreign power, captured its territory, expelled its authority, and peremptorily executed two foreign nationals. A huge controversy ensued as the outraged Spanish demanded the restoration of their lost territory and compensation for damages. Monroe’s cabinet was taken aback by the general’s boldness. Jackson biographer Robert V. Remini argues that just giving the assignment to Jackson, who had a deserved reputation for ruthless aggressiveness, was to sanction the seizure of Florida. Nonetheless, the executions and the occupation of Spanish territory left Monroe and all but one of his cabinet associates quaking.26

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At a July cabinet meeting, Calhoun and Crawford wanted Jackson punished; perhaps recalling Jackson’s association with Aaron Burr, Calhoun thought Jackson sought war as a pretext for an expedition on Mexico. Only John Quincy Adams remained unfazed and spoke in Jackson’s defense. He wrote: “The entrance of our troops into East Florida in pursuit of the savages, who after desolating our frontiers attempted to take refuge there, and their occupation of posts essential for holding them in check, will as easily admit of justification. The positive stipulation of Spain by treaty to restrain the Indians within her territories from all hostilities against the United States, and her notorious failure to fulfill that engagement rendered those measures on our part indispensable for the protection of our people against the most barbarous and unrelenting enemies.” Adams held the cabinet at bay, although Monroe wrote Jackson and timidly suggested that by taking a Spanish town he had committed an act of war, which was unconstitutional as only Congress could declare war.27 By the time the congressional session began in December, Jackson was in serious trouble. Tyler and others regarded his actions as precipitate, unconstitutional, and unlawful. Jackson’s friends were soon urging him to come to Washington to defend his reputation. On January 12, 1819, the House Committee on Military Affairs produced a report highly critical of Jackson’s conduct. Resolutions were proposed giving legislative remedy to the general’s alleged transgressions. The Richmond Enquirer published a series of critical essays written by Benjamin Watkins Leigh under the nom de plume “Sidney.” Editor Thomas Ritchie denounced Jackson for using the military in a fashion that threatened liberty. Virginia was said to be “about equally divided against herself” on the issue.28 Amid this maelstrom, Henry Clay delivered a spectacular speech that Remini describes as the greatest of Clay’s career. Merrill Peterson considers Clay’s effort “the first of the great oratorical displays in the capital that captivated the age.” It was also arguably one of the most foolish speeches Clay ever voiced, for Jackson, who knew how to hate passionately, became his mortal enemy. For Clay it was less a matter of principled opposition than another convenient opportunity to flay the Monroe administration. And flay it Clay did, with the House chamber packed with senators, foreign dignitaries, and society ladies like Margaret Bayard Smith as breathless spectators. The Speaker pronounced a jeremiad over two hours in length in which he accused Jackson of provoking the Seminoles in the first place via the excessively harsh terms of an earlier treaty. The general’s abysmal treatment of the Indians had embarrassed the United States in world opinion, and using the rhetoric of republicanism, Clay slyly implied that the nation had more to fear from Jackson than hostile tribes: “I love liberty and safety, and fear military despotism more even

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than I hate these monsters.” He branded the executions of Arbuthnot and Ambrister as illegal. The United States was engaged in “a great moral battle” for liberty on behalf of all mankind, but a military despotism could grow out of Jackson’s precipitate course and snuff out the great experiment, plunging humanity into darkness. “Beware how you give a fatal sanction, in this infant period of our Republic, scarcely yet two score years old, to military insubordination. Remember that Greece had her Alexander, Rome had her Caesar, England her Cromwell, France her Bonaparte, and, that, if we would escape the rock on which they split, we must avoid their errors.” This republican rhetoric must have appealed to Tyler and may account in part for his initial fondness for Clay.29 The day before Clay spoke, Tyler wrote: “We are engaged with Jackson and the President. I do not hesitate to say that the constitutional powers of the House of Representatives have been violated in the capture and detention of Pensacola . . . , that Jackson overstepped his orders; that the President has improperly approved his proceedings, and that the whole are culpable.” Still, Tyler stood by Monroe: “Yet I have greater confidence in Monroe than any other aspirant for the Presidency. He has justified a single violation of the Constitution; but they would establish all the roads asked for, all the National Banks which can be asked for, and do anything which might, in their belief, promote the general welfare. Let us look well to our rights. Our day of difficulty has not yet arrived.” Monroe had his faults, but he honored more republican prejudices than did other presidential aspirants.30 Tyler had earlier suggested that the seizure of Florida would be quite acceptable. In a letter written in January of the previous year, he stated: “I should not be at all surprised if the government went on to take possession of the Floridas—and it is more than probable that the Seminoles, if defeated by Gaines, will fly for shelter within the Spanish lines, and Gaines, in the eagerness of pursuit, may cross after them, and not be willing afterwards to retrace his steps. . . . By the treaty of ’95, the United States have a right to demand of Spain to beat down the hostile spirit of the Indians within her boundaries; and if she does not do so, she commits the first infraction of the treaty.” Tyler predicted the invasion twelve months prior to the border crossing and approved of it for the very same reasons Jackson cited. Why then did he condemn Jackson? Perhaps it was the deliberate character of Jackson’s invasion, whose pursuit of the tribes was not spontaneous but premeditated. He methodically crossed the international boundary, advanced on Seminole strongholds, and reduced them, executing the captured leaders. As such the campaign could not be characterized in a manner Tyler could stomach. It was an invasion by design rather than by chance or fortune. Norman Risjord agrees that Jackson’s methods were the reason for Tyler’s change of heart: “It seems probable

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that Tyler’s volte-face was due as much to personal distaste for Jackson’s precipitate methods as to any devotion to principle.”31 Tyler addressed the House on the Seminole War on February 1, 1819. His speech was a republican repudiation of Jackson’s conduct, propounding in its course the standard arguments of the faith: fear of a military chieftain, constitutional literalism and the dangers of latitudinarian construction, usurpation of congressional power and its dire consequences. Tyler disclaimed any personal animosity toward Jackson, acknowledging the general’s devoted service to the United States. Neither was he an enemy of President Monroe; indeed, Tyler stated that the president’s true friends favored him by pointing out his errors. With the firmness of settled conviction, Tyler pronounced himself the friend and protector of the Constitution, “the sheet anchor of our safety,” whose principles were “inflexible, immutable.” The country’s successful future depended upon the rigid maintenance of limitations inscribed in that awesome document. Jackson was a hero, but he had transgressed constitutional boundaries, and if his acts were allowed to stand and become precedents, the military would acquire and exercise powers that properly belonged to Congress. Tyler was again making the argument that a gradual chipping away of constitutional limits would occur each time a violation of those constraints was permitted to stand—violations became binding precedents, and eventually the entire constitutional edifice would be revolutionized, the compact that the states agreed to altered beyond recognition. This horrifying prospect, which could ultimately threaten the South’s “peculiar institution,” had to be resisted.32 Jackson had single-handedly eroded the powers of the House—annexing territory, establishing U.S. law, appointing territorial officials. Tyler argued that Congress was the constitutionally vested authority permitted to handle such questions. Jackson appeared as the physical embodiment of a generation of republican warnings—the military usurper made flesh. If the precedents Jackson had established were allowed to stand, Tyler feared that the United States could find itself at war without its elected representatives ever having voted upon it. A general might pursue a hostile Indian force into Canada and spark a conflict with Britain. A naval officer might occupy Cuba because of its advantages as a base from which to prey on shipping plying the West Indies. Tyler queried the House: “Will you . . . deliver yourselves up, bound hand and foot, to the arbitrary caprices of the officers of your army?” He would not consent to vest the army or navy with powers the Constitution conferred on Congress.33 Tyler cited as an example of the proper course that Jackson should have followed the Jefferson administration’s handling of the case of a Tripolitan brig that attacked an American warship. Defeated by the American vessel, the enemy ship was promptly released. Jefferson subsequently

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petitioned Congress for a declaration of war, pointing out that war already existed at the behest of Tripoli. “This was the course of proceedings in older times. Would that the principles of those times could exist forever!” Tyler wistfully averred. He contrasted Jackson’s reckless offensive unfavorably with Jefferson’s marked restraint. As always, Tyler peered into the mists of the fabled Jeffersonian past for guidance in the uncertain present.34 The Virginian objected to the capture of the Spanish settlements of St. Marks and Pensacola and to the executions of the two British citizens, Arbuthnot and Ambrister. Seizing the towns was only permissible if necessity compelled it—to save the army or prevent the enemy from capturing them. Executing prisoners too was only authorized if the safety of the army required it. With the Indians defeated, on the run, and no danger to Jackson’s army, there was no compelling reason for these acts.35 Tyler sounded the republican tocsin as Clay had done, conjuring up the specter of military dictatorship. “From what quarter do you expect your liberties to be successfully invaded? Not from the man whom you despise; against him you are always prepared to act—But, sir, you have more to fear from a nation’s favorite; from him whose path has been a path of glory; who has now your gratitude and confidence—against his errors you have to guard, lest they should grow into precedents and become in the end the law of the land.” This statement was a rather neat summary of Tyler’s argument. He averred that Virginia would not hesitate to rebuke a favorite son if his behavior merited it—the mistakes of George Washington himself would have been criticized.36 On February 8, 1819, the House voted on resolutions bearing on Jackson’s conduct. Tyler supported resolutions condemning the executions of Arbuthnot and Ambrister and the capture of Spanish settlements. They were defeated. The House rejected the recommendations of its own military committee and sanctioned after the fact Jackson’s invasion of Florida.37 Tyler’s speech on the Seminole War and Andrew Jackson was republican to its core. Again and again he stressed the importance of preserving the Constitution intact and the hazards of creating precedents that led to broader powers. The dogmatic constitutional literalism that the Antifederalists adopted after their defeat was readily apparent, as was the traditional republican fear of a military despot. On Saturday, February 13, 1819, James Tallmadge introduced a portentous amendment to a bill admitting the Missouri Territory into the Union as a state. The Tallmadge Amendment would have gradually abolished slavery in Missouri by prohibiting additional slaves from entering the new state and by freeing the children of slaves already in residence there when they reached a certain age. Southern congressmen were not

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pleased, and they suggested Tallmadge deserved the same punishment meted out to Ambrister and Arbuthnot. He defiantly answered: “Sir, if a dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so! If civil war, which gentlemen so much threaten, must come, I can only say, let it come!” John Quincy Adams stated that the Tallmadge Amendment “produced great fermentation . . . in the Southern States, but particularly in Virginia.” The debate “revealed the basis for a new organization of parties” that promised the end of Virginia’s immense influence in the national government and horrified the South. The sectional amity the Founding Fathers strove so mightily to cultivate had been greatly undermined.38 Virginia was at the forefront of southern opposition to restricting slavery’s expansion, while her aged Revolutionary heroes trembled at the newly hewn sectional fissure. Thomas Jefferson, in an oft-quoted comment, spied “the knell of the Union” and claimed, “In the gloomiest moment of the revolutionary war I never had any apprehensions equal to what I feel from this source.” James Madison was also concerned, “Should a state of parties arise, founded on geographical boundaries and other physical and permanent distinctions which happen to coincide with them, what is to control these great repulsive masses from awful shocks against each other?” Jefferson believed that Federalists, unable to excite popularity because of their support for a monarchical system, had hit upon restricting slavery as a wedge that would forge a geographical division and produce a new party.39 Virginia considered herself a special protector of states’ rights and became quite belligerent in opposition to Tallmadge’s proposal. Her newspapers spoke openly of secession. The minimalist conception of the national government so popular among important Virginia political figures was perceived as under siege by 1820, undermined by nationalist legislation passed after the War of 1812, Marshall Supreme Court decisions, and growth in the power and prestige of the federal government. Besides expressing themselves in ferocious newspaper attacks, Virginians voiced their displeasure in two notable episodes. First, in February, 1820, the state legislature passed a resolution demanding Missouri’s admission without restrictions or caveats. Then, President Monroe ran afoul of popular feeling in his home state when word that he might approve a compromise drifted back to Virginia. The state convention, entrusted with the task of nominating a candidate for the presidency, presumably a foregone conclusion in favor of the incumbent and favorite son, abruptly adjourned when the compromise rumor reached it. The president’s political managers eventually calmed the delegates, who reassembled and endorsed Monroe, but their fiery initial response demonstrated how high Virginia’s political temperature had risen.40 In Washington Tyler came down with a severe case of food poisoning,

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perhaps the result of a meal served at the rough boarding houses congressmen frequented during the sessions, and he postponed speaking on Missouri until the restoration of his health. (Symptoms dating to this attack plagued him for the remainder of his life.) His opposition to restriction was certain. He agreed with Thomas Jefferson that the crisis represented a power grab and presidential electioneering by northern Federalists, to whom he wished the worst: “The storm I trust will burst on the heads of those very wretches who have presumptuously raised it. They talk here of jugglers behind the scene, and of a Federal caucus. Rufus King and De Witt Clinton, are the prominent men in this intended divan of fools. Perhaps they may attempt to make head against Mr. Monroe. This I should like them to do, for then they would be unmasked, and stand exposed as objects of derision and scorn.” Twelve days after writing these lines, Tyler felt well enough to address the House on the Missouri question.41 The speech was essentially a refutation of certain arguments made earlier by restrictionists and as such lacked a coherent narrative flow, resembling a hodge-podge of rhetoric tacked together by non sequiturs. Nonetheless, interesting and revealing attitudes emerged in the speech, which was quite passionate and at times barbed in its conclusions. Although Tyler was to conclude with a plea for unity and an end to sectional discord, he began by placing the blame for the Missouri crisis squarely on the North. “Let it be set down in the tablets of your memory,” Tyler solemnly intoned, “that it is the work of the North, and not of the South.” Republicans North and South had joined hands during the “dark period” of 1798–99 and had remained united since then. Now the North sought to trample on “an essential right” by restricting Missouri’s ability to forge her own constitution and thereby set local policy. A state unable to determine local policy was not sovereign.42 The manifest injustice of this led Tyler into a wide-ranging disquisition on the harm that restricting slavery would do to the Constitution and ultimately to the nature and character of American government. He betrayed a decided preference for the strict limits carefully delineated in the dispassionate language of the Constitution to the romantic egalitarianism of the Declaration of Independence. Tyler claimed proponents of the Tallmadge Amendment combed the Constitution for a clause that they could twist into a convincing justification for their proposal. He took a dim view of the implied-powers argument. “Tell me not of implied and doubtful powers; against them I weigh the very nature of our Government, and the spirit of our institutions. They are founded on the great principle that man is capable of self-government; that he requires no foreign aid in regulating his domestic concerns.” He believed Congress’s course analogous to the high-handed actions of the British government

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that had precipitated the American Revolution. Actually he thought Tallmadge’s proposal more tyrannical than the crown’s dictates because the latter had often been repealed, whereas Tallmadge would have bound Missouri forever.43 Tyler insisted that the principles of the Constitution were fixed and immutable. “This Constitution was not made for a day; nor is it composed of such flexible materials as to be warped to the purposes of a casually ascendant influence.” Note his use of the term “influence” to characterize his foes, which for republicans carried eighteenth-century connotations of corruption. If the arguments of proponents of the Tallmadge Amendment were permitted to hold sway, the Constitution would mean whatever a majority decided it meant—a slave-state majority would vote for no restrictions on slavery, a free-state majority would impose restrictions. The inhabitants of the territory and what they might desire were utterly ignored, yet the framers, whom Tyler said he wished to “rescue” from “gross inconsistencies” (put forth by his contemporaries), intended “that man had a right to establish such government as best suited his own ideas of happiness.” Allowing Missourians to decide these local questions was the proper constitutional course.44 Restriction advocates opined that the principles of American government were opposed to slavery, triumphantly pointing out that the term “slavery” did not appear in the Constitution. Tyler countered that no form of property was specifically mentioned in the Constitution, and if restrictions were placed on one form of property and permitted to stand, all types of property were vulnerable to government action. And Tyler did find slavery in the Constitution. He contended the Constitution guaranteed southern slave property in Article 4, Section 2, wherein it was required that escaped slaves be returned to owners. He could not resist taunting northern members with this clause: “Rail at slavery as much as you please; I point you to the Constitution, and say to you, that you have not only acknowledged our right to this species of property, but that you have gone much further, and have bound yourselves to rivet the chains of the slave.” Northerners had promised not only to tolerate slavery but also to deliver the escaped slave back to its owner.45 Tyler stated that the framers of the Constitution were “sound practical men” not given to countenancing “idle theories.” They had just emerged victorious from a conflict in which unity was essential to success—and to perpetuate unity and for the general good, sacrifices had to be made. The slave states would never have submitted to the compact had they felt their property might later be placed at risk. “Self-interest,” which Tyler described as “that great and almost exclusive motive to human action” would not permit Union if the cost was freeing the slaves. His belief that “self-interest” was almost the sole motivation for human action

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explains his intense attachment to binding limitations on the national government. Strict adherence to these restrictions protected the people and nation from victimization at the hands of self-interested men. If men acted in their own self-interest most of the time, that impulse had to be guided into safe harbors by reducing the possibility of temptation and mischief. A bloated and all-powerful federal government would be subject to manipulation by self-interested men who combined into factions or interest groups to achieve corrupt purposes. It was preferable to keep the government small and restrain its growth by rigid observance of the Constitution. Tyler spoke of the “boundaries of our power.” If Missouri accepted the Tallmadge restriction, the power of the federal government would grow as the constitutional-amendment process, the appropriate procedural path for such a proposal, would have been circumvented. If the amendment were accepted, Congress would have committed a “manifest usurpation of power.”46 Northern proponents had quoted the Declaration of Independence and argued that all men were free, sovereign, and independent. Tyler dismissed this as an abstract truth with which he agreed, but he cautioned that the principles of the Declaration could not be applied to society in extenso, or “in full.” Distinctions and differences grounded in innate ability and social station existed and could not be erased. “No, sir, the principle, although lovely and beautiful, cannot obliterate those distinctions in society which society itself engenders and gives birth to.” And Tyler warned, “Liberty and equality are captivating sounds; but they often captivate to destroy.” Robespierre preached liberty and equality while “enriching the fields of France with the blood of her citizens.” Tyler insisted he believed in applying the principle of equality as much as was practicable and suggested that if American society was not prepared to lift the black man to the level of the white, it might at least raise Missourians to the level of other white American citizens by permitting them a constitution of their choice. Thus Tyler employed the noble rhetoric of the Declaration to support the rights of white Missourians rather than those in bondage. He evinced the discomfort southerners experienced throughout the Missouri debate with the Declaration, the words of which, if taken literally, precluded the institution of slavery. When northerners brandished the Declaration to justify restricting slavery, southerners were compelled to attack it as a jumble of aphorisms not to be taken literally. As John Randolph said later, the Declaration was a “fanfaronade of abstractions.” In addition, the frightening social disintegration and class-based violence of republican France, which culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon, demonstrated clearly enough the perils of fanatical egalitarianism. The Declaration’s leveling rhetoric was incompatible with the republican emphasis on an independent citizenry, preferably composed of

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property owners inclined to resist the blandishments of government. Property qualifications for voting seemed like a worthy precaution, and thus some republicans were uncomfortable with universal suffrage. These fears later made reactionary republicans like Tyler wary of Jacksonian democracy and at least may partly explain his subsequent break with Jackson.47 Having described his ideological objections to restricting slavery, which he characterized ultimately as a “usurpation” of power, Tyler turned to what might be termed practical objections. Even if Congress possessed the power to dictate Missouri’s slave policy, the restriction would still be “unjust and impolitic.” The territory was purchased out of a “common purse” to which North and South contributed. Both regions were “joint tenants” of the territory; to deny the South full and equal participation was a “gross injustice.” Southern planters had moved to Missouri with their slave property and with no expectation that the rules would later be changed and their property manumitted. They would be deprived of the labor needed to render their land profitable.48 Confining slavery to the South was bad policy and did not serve the interests of the Union, Tyler argued. He propounded what has been called the diffusion theory to support this contention. This was the belief, held by Virginia political giants such as Jefferson and Madison, that dispersing the slave population had many beneficial effects, while confining it had many negative effects. Tyler sketched the specifics of the theory. He contended, first, that slavery would be harder on the South if hemmed in: “Will you suffer it to increase in its darkness over a particular portion of this land until its horrors shall burst upon it? Will you permit the lightnings of its wrath to break upon the South, when, by the interposition of a wise system of legislation, you may reduce it to a summer’s cloud?” Moving to the advantages of diffusion, Tyler declared prospects for emancipation were increased by dispersing the slave population. New York, Pennsylvania, and other states had been able to emancipate because of the small number of slaves within their boundaries. By contrast, for states like Georgia or South Carolina with a large slave population, pursuing an emancipation policy would be “political suicide.” Dispersion also improved conditions for the slaves as it increased the demand for labor, which provided an incentive for owners to treat their charges better. “By this dispersion you also ameliorate the condition of the black man,” Tyler stated.49 A northern congressman had suggested that opening Missouri to slavery would provide a new market for slaves and increase their price, which would spur the illegal slave trade. Tyler refuted this argument. Smuggling could only occur off the coast and Missouri was an inland state. Missouri was at the same latitude as Virginia, had only a small portion of land

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appropriate for cotton, would produce comparable products, and thus could expect an identical development of slavery. Tyler could not remember a single instance of slaves being smuggled into Virginia—there was a better market for them in the Deep South. In fact, slaves were constantly drained from Virginia, where demand for them was low, into southern cotton regions, where demand was high. Opening Missouri to slavery would have none of the predicted dire effects.50 Tyler grandly stated that “the purposes of humanity” would be served by voting the Tallmadge Amendment down—“you advance the interest, and secure the safety of one-half of this extended Republic; you ameliorate the condition of the slave, and you add much to the prospects of emancipation and the total extinction of slavery.” Tyler had made the seemingly unlikely case that adding a slave state to the Union was a humanitarian measure that, among other benefits, would increase slave emancipation. He, Robert Walker, and others were to employ the same argument in favor of the annexation of Texas some twenty years later.51 Tyler envisioned a great and expansive destiny for the United States that could only be disrupted by divisions among the American people, a malady he termed “the bane of a Republic.” Drawing on his knowledge of ancient history, no doubt the product of a William and Mary education, he gave examples of ancient republics that fell and lost whatever liberty they possessed because of societal divisions. Their disastrous fate was an object lesson for policymakers. If proponents persisted with the Tallmadge Amendment, Tyler argued, history would record that the North abridged the rights of the South and violated the Constitution at a time of contentment with a promising destiny ahead. The North had to abandon Tallmadge; Tyler stated his oath to uphold the Constitution prevented him from ever sanctioning the amendment. “For myself, I cannot, and will not, yield one inch of ground,” he avowed with familiar obstinacy.52 The United States had made great progress. Fifty years ago, Tyler stated, Europe considered Americans mere savages. But the United States had emerged “with great brightness” from the Revolution, and now kings courted American amity. The United States was a singular nation in the world, and there was no limit to the glory that it could achieve. “We direct the destinies of a mighty continent. Our resources are unlimited: our means unbounded. If we be true to ourselves, the glory of other nations, in comparison to ours, shall resemble but a tale from the days of chivalry.” Tyler’s belief in American exceptionalism and his support for expansion were themes that reappeared throughout his political career.53 In the end Tyler voted in favor of the motion to remove the restriction clause from the admission bill, the first element of the compromise, but voted against the thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes of latitude line, the second element. Tyler subsequently voted in favor of Clay’s compromise

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resolution that finally admitted Missouri, apparently reasoning that further resistance was divisive and futile. Years later, on the eve of the Civil War, Tyler was still opposed to the Compromise line: “I would have stood there until I perished before I would have recognized that line. I believed it to be unconstitutional. I believe it to be, moreover, . . . the opening of the Pandora’s box which would let out upon us all the present evils which have gathered over the land.”54 Calls for increases in tariff levels gave Tyler an opportunity to voice his opinion on this important element of the nationalist agenda. He spoke on April 24, 1820. As was often customary with Tyler, he raised both practical and ideological objections to a measure he opposed, with both pleas complementing each other. On a practical level, Tyler refuted certain of the protariff arguments. He denied that the manufacturing interest was suffering more than other segments of the economy during the depression. Consequently, manufacturing was not entitled to targeted government subsidies in the form of duties on foreign competitors. To those who argued that the economic downturn was a product of the current tariff-rate structure, Tyler had a more sober response. He attributed it to a slackening of European demand for American foodstuffs brought about by the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars and to the disruptive effects of the “hot-bed” banking system, withal a broader explanation than he had expounded during the bank debate. A higher tariff would damage commerce, which rested on the free exchange of goods—and foreign nations were unlikely to purchase American goods when their products were denied free access to the American market. The prodding of government would inexorably redirect capital and labor to manufacturing and away from agriculture, leaving in its wake depressed land values. Claims that higher duties would produce a home market for agriculture were fatuous given the immense annual crop surplus that remained even after the domestic market had satiated its needs. The country was already smothered by taxation, and a weak economy was not the proper moment to add to the burden. Retrenchment of government expenditures was a better idea. Diminished land values, loss of foreign markets, a shrinking domestic market, and heavier taxation—such were the practical effects of the legislation.55 Tyler also drew on an understanding of political economy grounded in eighteenth-century beliefs, particularly those of Adam Smith. Promising to “cling” with “persevering obstinacy” to the current revenue system, he warned against speeding the natural progression of national development by subsidizing manufacturing. To illustrate the point, he likened men and nations. When young, men pined for maturity, and when old, they longed for youth. Nations too wanted to mature quickly, and this was unwise—why rush to the mature stage and then a “premature old age.” He

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was enunciating the theory that countries had a finite organic lifespan similar to that of humans: birth, youth, maturity, decay, and death—a cyclical view of history commonly accepted in the eighteenth century. Agriculture was considered a youthful stage of evolution, while manufacturing was a mature stage. It was an accepted republican axiom that the agricultural stage was safer for republics because it was populated by independent, virtuous farmers who could be trusted to oversee the government. Manufacturing by contrast bred city-dwelling factory workers dependent on the vagaries of consumer caprice. Tyler contended the United States was in its agricultural youth and had no wish to hurry to the corrupt manufacturing stage. Hinting at Smith’s “invisible hand,” he contended that a state dominated by manufacturing would appear when interest dictated it by natural progression. “Natural causes will produce this result. Nature governs man by no principle more fixed than that which leads him to pursue his interest. When it shall correspond with the interest of this nation to become a manufacturing nation, such will it become.” That condition was unlikely while a wilderness remained to be settled. Tyler thought it better to direct the nation’s energy to clearing “useless forest lands” for productive endeavors rather than to invest in manufacturing, which was in keeping with Adam Smith’s dictum that a nation should completely develop its agricultural resources before turning to manufacturing.56 Smith argued, with few limitations, for an integrated world economy in which each nation produced goods best suited to their unique characteristics and resources and as dictated by market forces free of the distortions of meddling governments. He criticized mercantilism for its disruptive effect on both the world and domestic economies. Mercantilism artificially channeled funds into manufacturing, a practice that Smith criticized as less productive for investors. Tyler echoed these conclusions. When proponents of a higher tariff insisted that the United States avoid dependence upon other nations, he condemned that contention as subversive of “the ordinances of Heaven itself.” Mercantilism’s emphasis on the hoarding of gold and silver was “indicative of the highest folly,” for these articles sole value was as a medium of exchange, a function that could not be performed if all currency was locked up in strongboxes. In truth, nation was dependent on nation, Tyler stated. The products of less temperate regions differed from those of the temperate zone, and it was more sensible for them to trade than to construct hot-houses for growing cotton in Massachusetts. If the mania for national independence was carried too far, each nation would withdraw from the world. The result would be a decline in the arts that most improved life and a worldwide regression into a “state of vandalism.” Dismissing the national-security fears that were a protectionist staple, Tyler declared an agricultural nation less

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vulnerable in the event of war than a manufacturing one—the former had bread and could dispense with the “gewgaws.” Tyler told the tariff men simply “we want no change.”57 The bill to increase duties failed ninety-one to fifty-five on May 1, 1820, more evidence of the fraying of the consensus in favor of nationalist measures that had emerged after the War of 1812. Tyler voted with the majority to defeat passage. He had no desire to hurtle past the virtuous agricultural interlude the country then enjoyed and into a Dantesque age of manufacturing.58 John Tyler’s House career ended on January 15, 1821, with a circular thanking his constituents for the privilege of serving but declining to run for another term. Health was a factor, for Tyler was still plagued by the aftereffects of food poisoning. Children were arriving, and Tyler needed to earn a better living. Once out of office he could focus on his law practice. Surrendering the congressional seat to Andrew Stevenson was painless because Tyler considered Stevenson a political soulmate.59 Tyler had mastered the republican lessons imparted by Judge Tyler and Bishop Madison. He was a rigid adherent to republican orthodoxy and was grounded in eighteenth-century sentiments. He confessed that while his age was young, his politics were old, that he looked to the past for wisdom, for guidance. His House career constituted a battle to preserve the republican vision of an agrarian society and minimalist national government, a preference for expansion into space rather than through time, and a defiant stand against the tide of modernity. The Supreme Court decisions under John Marshall, the creation of the Second National Bank, tariff increases, the beginnings of the personality cult of Andrew Jackson, and other such events were anathema to Tyler’s republican sensibilities and drove him into a perpetually embattled, defensive posture from which he never truly emerged. He departed the House with a typically hyperbolic pledge of continued resistance to the nationalist, modernist agenda. “To my latest breath I will, whether I am in public or private life, oppose the daring usurpations of this government—usurpations of a more alarming character than have ever before taken place, even during the fearful period of ’98-’99.” Passion such as this would not long suffer silence.60

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A Jeffersonian Republican in the Age of Jackson John Tyler’s patrimony and devotion to republicanism bid him return to the political arena, and he obeyed the summons as soon as his health permitted. He was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1823 and served two terms and in December, 1825, was tapped for governor, then a rather toothless post in keeping with Virginia’s republican distaste for a strong executive. It nevertheless must have pleased Tyler to fill an office once held by his revered father. While governor, he delivered a state eulogy for Thomas Jefferson, who passed away on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after American independence was proclaimed to the world, and in the speech Tyler reaffirmed his fealty to the republican tenets that the great sage represented. Jefferson’s ideas were a “mighty spirit . . . abroad upon the earth” that would “overturn principalities and powers, and trample thrones in the dust.” Then in January, 1827, the Virginia legislature sent Tyler to the U.S. Senate, in large part because the bizarre eccentricities of John Randolph had become unbearable. Tyler re-emerged on the national stage he had quitted, ill and discouraged, six years previous.1 Startled by the nationalism of John Quincy Adams, especially as manifested in his first message to Congress, Tyler found himself voting with Andrew Jackson supporters in the Senate, an alliance held together by mutual distaste for the president. Never a true full-fledged Jacksonian, Tyler had backed William Crawford for president in 1824 and dismissed the corrupt bargain charge against Adams and Clay as fictitious. He reluctantly supported Jackson in 1828 while privately fretting that neither Adams nor Jackson was the ideal republican candidate. With his distrust

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of leveling, Tyler must have greeted with horror the arrival of the mob that thronged the capital for Jackson’s inauguration and later made a shambles of the White House. Ultimately he voted his conscience while a member of the Senate, maintaining an independent stand consistent with the republican conception of the virtuous, disinterested representative. “For myself my course in the Senate shall meet with my own entire approval, and altho’ I may subject myself to assaults on all sides, yet I shall remain immovable and steadfast in the faith of our fathers.” This statement could easily characterize Tyler’s presidential course. He had fixed, firm convictions that he was prepared to uphold against all challengers.2 He provided some insight into these principles in an 1831 letter to South Carolina senator Robert Y. Hayne, who had written requesting documents that would help him achieve a greater understanding of the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and the Virginia Report of 1800. Hayne was most likely scouting for material to back up his contention that the Virginia Resolutions and Report sanctioned nullification and secession, a conclusion that was hotly disputed by former president James Madison. In his response Tyler recommended that his friend consult a number of sources, among them the Hampden essays of the late Spencer Roane, which had appeared in the Richmond Enquirer. Roane emphasized the necessity of preserving the Constitution inviolate, and he also endorsed state sovereignty and the compact theory of the American government’s creation. He strongly warned of the dangers of allowing even a seemingly inconsequential power to be inferred or implied by a constitutional clause lest it become a precedent from which greater and greater implied interpretations grew until the limits of the document vanished. Thus his argument was strongly tinged with traditional republican fears of progressive decay and the importance of vehemently upholding compacts to prevent an erosion of liberty.3 Using similar republican tones, Tyler echoed Roane’s argument: “(All our legislative protests have been based upon the ground that the States as Independant sovereignties are parties to the compact of Union. That the Union is but a political partnership to be conducted according to the terms of agreement expressed in the Constitution. That each State has therefore a right to pass upon the acts of the F. govt. or either of its departments.—That it may necessarily protest remonstrate and finally secede.) In other words that the political partnership is liable in all essential particulars to the rules which govern in a partnership of individuals.”4 This came perilously close to an endorsement of the nullification doctrine, but Tyler insisted that he did not accept that theory. He did, however, believe secession was possible.5 Tyler also believed his role as a senator was to be a republican guardian, a kind of senatorial ombudsman, ever vigilant for evidence that state

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prerogatives were being trampled by the actions of the federal government and Congress. When he detected what he perceived as violations of state sovereignty, Tyler denounced them to the world. His career in the Senate was one long republican remonstrance against the growing power of the federal government. Tyler strode the Senate corridors during its golden age, his contemporaries the archangels of the chamber’s history: Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun. While struggling with these stellar worthies, Tyler had the advantage of fixed ideological convictions from which to conduct an argument. For the most part, he was relatively silent in the Senate as the Adams administration drew to an involuntary close. He voted against the Tariff of 1828, the “tariff of abominations,” which Tyler referred to as “that curse to the whole South.”6 Staunch republicans were suspicious of President Jackson’s fealty to their vision of American society and government. Tyler had been harshly critical of the former general’s 1818 Florida campaign. Jackson raised republican hackles when, upon returning to the Senate in 1823, he supported internal improvements and the Tariff of 1824. Martin Van Buren joined the Jackson presidential bandwagon only after receiving assurances that the campaign was pledged to traditional republican issues, while John Randolph unenthusiastically backed Jackson because John Quincy Adams presented no true alternative. Virginia senator Littleton Tazewell discerned the tensions within the pro-Jackson coalition and thought it might break up after the general was elected.7 Tyler and Jackson were bound to clash, given Tyler’s republican worldview with its deep, abiding distrust of executive power and Jackson’s tendency to strong leadership and willingness to discard the conventional rules in favor of those of his own making. His vigorous assertion of executive power—Jackson vetoed more bills than had any previous president— was bound to alarm someone raised and educated to expect the threat to liberty to emerge from the executive branch. An early intimation that Tyler and Jackson would part company came in September, 1829, when the president appointed a mission to Turkey while the Senate was in recess. He never submitted the commissioners for confirmation, and over a year passed before the administration referred the mission in any fashion to Congress, and this came in the form of a provision for their salaries in an appropriation bill. Virginia senator and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Littleton Tazewell lodged a protest against what he characterized as an abuse of power by the executive. Permitting the president to get away with flouting the Constitution and Senate was dangerous. “It is the nature of man to covet power, and to abuse that which he has, in order to acquire more; and of all forms of government this elective monarchy of ours is least calculated to repress this natural

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proclivity of its temporary chief,” Tazewell solemnly intoned. Tyler joined Tazewell in expressing this traditional republican warning, and the two endured abuse from the Jacksonian press for daring to question the president.8 Jackson also rewarded newspaper editors and writers who had proven useful in the election campaign with nominations to lucrative patronage posts, men like Maj. Henry Lee, Mordecai Noah, and Amos Kendall, the latter an associate of Henry Clay until Clay refused to loan him money. Both Tyler and Tazewell opposed these nominations because they did not favor employing government patronage to shape press and editorial content. “No, sir, no tampering with the press,” Tyler contended, “let it be what it should always be, the sentinel on the watch-tower—unawed by fear, uncorrupted by money.” Providing the press with patronage carrots was analogous in its effect to the Sedition Act—that is, it was subversive of liberty.9 Jackson and Tyler found common ground on one issue, internal improvements. A bill had been proposed to extend the National Road between the cities of Maysville and Lexington, both of which were located in Kentucky. Since the project involved a length of road within a single state rather than several states, its character as a national project eligible for funding by the national government was disputed. Strict constructionists questioned the constitutionality of the federal government’s involvement in purely local projects. While advocating the bill, Henry Clay made disparaging remarks about Virginia prejudices and the poor quality of her roads. Tyler felt compelled to speak, goaded by Clay’s outburst and his own traditional opposition to funding internal improvements from Washington.10 Tyler’s speech was imbued with the themes of eighteenth-century American republicanism, themes he had employed while a House member. He manifested a belief in the corruptibility of human nature, an assumption that was the basis for the organic theory of the life of a nation. The inevitability of decay prompted republicans to emphasize the absolute necessity of preserving the Constitution from latitudinarian encroachment. The tiniest of alterations in that document was deemed catastrophic, the inception of a slippery descent into ruin, victory of power over liberty, and in the end, tyranny’s birth. Tyler possessed an apocalyptic vision of the danger federal internal improvements embodied. When Congress exercised the power to build roads, “all that is dear and should be considered sacred in our institutions is put to hazard.” For Tyler, federal internal improvements constituted the opening wedge in a concerted program whose ultimate goal was a consolidated national government. Building roads and canals only whetted Congress’s appetite to seize and wield ever greater and more-intrusive

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powers; congressional power had grown immensely since it began sponsoring internal improvements. Tyler catalogued the changes: “The internal policy of the States prescribed, the industry of the country regulated, and all the mere charities of life exercised as fully by this Government as by an imperial monarch.” The states were reduced to “mere provinces” with each successive augmentation of national power.11 Tyler maintained that no clause authorized federal internal improvements, therefore their implementation constituted a latitudinarian construction that significantly harmed the Constitution’s liberty-preserving parameters. Worse yet, they opened the door to still greater decay. “We oppose ourselves to every strained construction of the constitution,” Tyler declared, “under the knowledge that the concession of one power, however slight, leads to the claim of another, and another, until all will be gone.” Tyler’s foes sought to construe the Constitution into impotence, converting it gradually into “a nose of wax.”12 Corruption, that ever present danger to republics, founded on the weakness and inherent selfishness of human nature, emerged as a theme in the speech too. Tyler stressed that the Maysville bill benefited certain interests, unholy combinations that had been formed to pursue this and other nationalist measures. Money, cupidity, and avarice, these “fatal sisters,” were weaving a web of deceit to entangle the nation, a menace more sinister than that which Virginia had faced with the passage of the Sedition Act. Tyler described the seductive allure of internal improvements: “Pleasure has ever more been represented by poets and by painters as clothed in perpetual smiles, and adorned with the richest jewels; and in real life, we have known many who, allured by her deceptions, blandishments, and hollow but showy temptations, have followed as she pointed, until ruin has befallen them. So will it be with us as a confederated republic.” Thus Tyler revisited the eighteenth-century republican conviction of inescapable societal decay, employing imagery suggestive of a passion play, with internal improvements in the role of the great tempter. If society succumbed to the fatal embrace of measures beyond constitutional limits, it would propel itself into a corrupt commercial and industrial condition beyond the virtuous pastoral idyll. Tyler shared the republican conclusion that legislation that assisted narrow interests at the expense of the masses hastened societal decay—this had been a principal republican objection to mercantilist policies. He stressed the venality of human nature, that most basic republican assumption, when he warned of the scheming of ambitious politicians. “But if we surrender ourselves into the hands of ingenious politicians, those aspirants for high office who seek evermore to enlist in their support the strongest passions of human nature, with a view to their individual aggrandizement, the ark of the covenant will be destroyed, and the temple rent in twain.”13

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Thus when confronting internal improvements, Tyler employed traditional republican objections and assumptions—the necessity of upholding the Constitution intact, the imperfectability of human nature, corruption of the government—to nationalist legislation. But a tone of sectional grievance crept into his speech as well, for he contended that the South had been damaged by nationalist legislation passed by the same unholy combination now backing the Maysville bill. He made the peculiar claim that, historically, regions of colder climates preyed on those of more temperate zones, an argument his father had made decades previous. As a southern politician, Tyler was no doubt influenced by the prevailing sense of grievance on the part of the South, still smarting over the Tariff of 1828 and concerned with the nascent abolition movement in the North. Men like Tyler were aware that one of the institutions that an intact Constitution protected was slavery, which they considered a propertyrights matter. The ability of a man to dispose of his property as he saw fit was a key republican tenet; although the emphasis was on land as the property in question, for land ownership ensured independence from corruption. Republicans also argued that men were “entitled to autonomous control of the resources that were absolutely necessary for . . . subsistence.” Slaves might fit this criterion.14 Despite these apocalyptic pronouncements and his tendency to rigid consistency, Tyler eventually succumbed to the lure of federal internal improvements. In June, 1832, he supported federal funds for a bridge between Washington and Alexandria, prompting a bemused Henry Clay to congratulate Tyler on the Senate floor for joining him in support of internal improvements. Clay expressed hope that the Virginian would go beyond the District of Columbia in his efforts.15 But that was in the future. For now, Tyler hoped Jackson would veto the National Road bill on constitutional grounds; by citing the Constitution, Tyler believed, Jackson could avoid offending Kentucky. The president was indeed leaning toward a veto, apparently worried that the cost of large-scale internal improvements would disrupt his plan to eliminate the national debt. One historian has argued that Jackson’s concern was not so much the national debt as placating states’ righters angered at his famous pro-Union toast, delivered at a recent Jefferson Day dinner. Jackson and Van Buren had been searching for an issue with which to cool states’ rights tempers; the Maysville bill was perfect and possessed the added attraction of being located in Clay’s backyard. Jackson vetoed the bill on May 27, 1830, citing the dubious constitutionality of a measure involving road construction entirely within one state and arguing for restrained government spending.16 Elated by Jackson’s veto, Tyler dispatched a copy of the veto message to his absent senatorial colleague Littleton Tazewell. Tyler believed that the

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veto would spur Clay and other “corruptionists” to political battle and that a sharper delineation of the existing political parties would follow. He hoped for a rallying of anticonsolidation forces similar to that which had occurred in 1798–99.17 On January 11, 1832, Henry Clay introduced a resolution modifying tariff duties, inaugurating the usual political donnybrook that erupted whenever the tariff burbled to the political surface. Southerners were still angry over the Tariff of 1828, and Clay recognized that Jackson was likely to meet southern desires by reducing the tariff as the national debt declined and the government began running a surplus. He hoped to preserve protectionist levels on certain products by seizing the initiative with his own proposal and by allowing duties to fall on products that did not face foreign competition. After working its laborious way through the congressional sausage grinder, a modified tariff passed months later and received Jackson’s imprimatur on July 14, 1832. Nearly all duty levels dropped to 25 percent, but high rates were retained for iron, woolens, and cotton. Despite the decline in duties, viscerally antitariff southerners remained unmollified, and this frustration led to the Nullification Crisis.18 Addressing Clay’s resolution in a speech given February 9, 1832, Tyler struck a remarkably strident tone of sectional injury, reflective of the rising sectional tensions that characterized the 1830s. The tariff was “peculiarly destructive to the South,” where it was regarded as “an unmixed pill of bitterness.” Simply put, the tariff forced the South to sell its crops at low prices while saddling it with high prices for finished goods, all to benefit northern interests. The entire object of the tariff system was a war on southern agriculture. Nature had endowed the South with fertile soil and a good climate that yielded bumper crops, but tragically “the fruits of our labor are to be wrested from us, to enrich a less favored region.” He admonished the North to remember the biblical injunction against coveting a neighbor’s goods.19 Such virulence came in part because a protective tariff offended Tyler’s republican sensibilities, and much of his attack on it was a reiteration of the republican conception of an agrarian society. He thus drew on the traditional republican principles that he had absorbed as a young man, and it is fascinating to note the continued employment in political discourse of these conceptions, dating to the eighteenth century and even earlier. For example, Tyler again voiced the republican acceptance of an organic lifespan for nation-states and the insistent republican wish to preserve the United States in a youthful state dominated by agriculture with its virtuous yeomen. A protective tariff boosted the fortunes of American manufacturers, whom it shielded from foreign competition, and diverted capital to that sector of the economy. This violated Adam

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Smith’s dictum that the agricultural sector be completely developed before manufacturing is encouraged. The effect might be an artificial acceleration of the natural movement of the United States from a predominately agricultural to a predominantly commercial and industrial nation peopled by corruptible factory workers and urban dwellers, something republicans would be anxious to forestall. “The truth is,” said Tyler, “that the effort is made to overstep centuries—to convert, by political nostrums, a youthful nation into one of two thousand years’ standing . . . to advance from infancy to old age, without waiting for the due course of nature.” Attempting to circumvent nature’s timetable was folly, as Tyler illustrated by describing Virginia’s brief dalliance with a silk industry in the seventeenth century. When the government offered bounties for the planting of mulberry trees, vast orchards sprang up, but Virginians soon realized prosperity and happiness could be earned by clearing and settling the wilderness, and the silk culture was abandoned. Tyler declared that mulberry trees still could be found near Williamsburg, “and the wind, as it sighs through their decayed branches, speaks, in plain and intelligible language, of the impotence and folly of all human policy which is attempted to be set up in opposition to the decrees of nature.” It was wrong to cross nature, and there was no need to do so while the United States was in the virtuous agricultural stage and enjoying the fruits of that condition. “Why force any thing in such a country?” Tyler asked. “Consult the pages of history, and tell me if ever a nation had made such rapid advances in refinement and wealth as this, before we resorted to political quackery, and administered sickening nostrums to force every thing. A wilderness reclaimed—a world filled and filling with inhabitants—the arts and sciences keeping equal pace with our advance in wealth and prosperity, all going on happily and harmoniously, and the country advancing, with rapid strides, to the consummation of its high destinies. Why then, Mr. President, force any thing?”20 And the high destiny that Tyler envisioned for the United States was an expansive one that would prolong the agrarian idyll, hinting at the motive that would drive his effort as president to acquire Texas. “My imagination has led me to look into the distant future, and there to contemplate the greatness of free America. I have beheld her walking on the waves of the mighty deep, carrying along with her tidings of great joy to distant nations. I have seen her overturning the strong places of despotism, and restoring to man his long lost rights.” Here again was the republican conception as articulated by Madison and Jefferson to preserve the virtuous pastoral condition by expanding into the wilderness and clearing it for noble yeomen, those independent souls so jealous of liberty and suspicious of state power. Those who contended for a system that

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favored one section of the country at the expense of another, who sought to accelerate the natural organic progression of the nation into a premature decay, and who fomented sectional grievances that fostered a spirit of disunion would find themselves condemned by all mankind. Better, Tyler warned, that they had never been born. He disparaged protectionist emphasis on the importance of creating a domestic market and fostering national independence from foreign goods. Despite all the talk of the tariff engendering a home market, crops were trading at lower prices than ever before, and without the foreign market, Tyler argued, they would be rotting in the fields because it would be unprofitable to harvest them. Free trade was a key to prosperity and to the preservation of the republican ideal. He echoed the sentiments of James Madison, who had argued that foreign markets for surplus crops were vital as an incentive for western expansion and for the industrious farming that bred responsible citizens. Madison believed the United States had to expand into space and commercially preserve the ascendancy of agriculture. Government subsidies to manufacturing interests via tariff protection, and the consequent closing off of foreign markets, in Madison’s view could fundamentally alter American society and economy. Tyler contended that the United States was in effect waging “commercial war” against its best customers. A policy of free trade would produce incalculable benefits since foreign nations were apt to respond to American openness by reducing or eliminating their own trade barriers. Only the protective tariff stood in the path of realizing these dreams— it was the absolute enemy of American agriculture. Under the prodding of American protection, foreign production of grain and food stuffs was stimulated, preserving an economic sector that might otherwise collapse if cheap and abundant American grain was permitted to compete on a level playing field.21 Tyler condemned those who wished to see the United States independent of foreign nations, an argument that was not only “shallow” but also “impious.” He repeated Joseph Priestley’s contention that God had ordained that men be dependent upon each other. “An all-wise Providence never designed that man should be independent of man, or nation of nation. Separate man from his species—throw him upon his own unaided and unassisted resources—and you convert him forthwith into a ferocious savage.” The best of the arts and sciences crossed the oceans, carrying the lights of civilization to all corners of the globe. Shut those pathways down, “set at naught the decrees of the Creator,” and a “night of gloom and ignorance would enshroud the world.”22 Tyler noted that states that had once opposed the tariff had been transformed into tariff enthusiasts. Until 1824, New England had opposed a protective tariff; now a manufacturing center, pure and simple self-

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interest had prompted a change in attitude. Louisiana embraced the tariff when a duty advantageous to its sugar planters was put into place. Tyler concluded: “this system. . . . elevates the money principle above the influence of moral and just political causes. It appeals to the motives of self-interest, in place of those high and lofty motives which should alone control, and it appeals not in vain.” The protective tariff was thereby linked with corruption, as understood by traditional republicanism. It was a government policy that favored certain groups that had an interest in directing that policy to their own selfish needs, what today would be called “special interests.” One of the great republican fears was that this type of corruption, which Americans considered rampant in Britain during the eighteenth century, would infect the pristine American Republic. A sign that such corruption was occurring was a loss of moral integrity, and Tyler subtly suggested that states that had abandoned their antitariff opinions were guilty of compromising that integrity. He considered this an ominous portent. “Money . . . has been properly said to be the key to unlock the strongest fortress; and, sir, it is but too apt to prostrate and destroy all that is pure and virtuous in the heart of man; it paves the way to the overthrow of republics, and buries in ruin temples erected to liberty. Man cannot worship God and mammon; and if you would preserve the political temple pure and undefiled, it can only be done by expelling the money changers, and getting back to the worship of our fathers.” The tariff was a species of corruption that Tyler’s republicanism conditioned him to recognize as a threat to the American nation, and his argument against it demonstrated the continued relevance, in his mind, of those historic principles and beliefs.23 In many respects John Tyler’s exodus from the Democratic party began in earnest, incongruously enough, with a political meeting in South Carolina that he did not attend. There on November 19, 1832, delegates chosen by special election produced a nullification ordinance that abolished the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 in South Carolina effective February 1, 1833. John Calhoun had famously contended that a state could nullify an unconstitutional federal law, and his fellow Carolinians now boldly moved to test the theory. If this radical assertion was allowed to stand, the character of the American government would be fundamentally altered.24 The South Carolinians gave Andrew Jackson little opportunity to savor his 1832 election victory over Henry Clay. Kept apprised of events by pro-Union Carolinians, Jackson had begun to take precautions for safeguarding federal revenue in South Carolina as early as October, 1832. He strengthened the garrisons of Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney, dispatched his own observer to the region, and placed the redoubtable Winfield Scott in command of the military effort.25 His first public pronouncement touching on the South Carolinians’

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defiance was remarkably conciliatory. In his fourth message to Congress, dated December 4, 1832, Jackson reported that his long battle to eliminate the national debt was nearing fruition. He predicted it would be erased in 1833. Consequently, tariff reduction was in order, and the president recommended duty levels at the very minimum necessary to ward off foreign competition to certain vital defense industries. He declared his ultimate goal to be a revenue tariff and that manufacturers could not expect perpetual subsidies, for a high tariff caused too much discontent. Jackson devoted a mere paragraph to South Carolina’s actions; without specifically mentioning her, he noted that a state threatened to defy the government’s revenue laws and even the Union itself. He expressed hope that the rule of law, dedicated officials, and public opinion would combine to bring the unnamed state to its senses. Failing that, the law provided remedies for refusing to execute federal laws, and Jackson promised to provide specific recommendations to Congress should it become necessary to enforce the law.26 Rather bland and mild in tone for the fiery Jackson, with its promise of tariff reductions, the message was welcomed with a degree of hope and comfort by some Virginians fidgeting over the implications of the state-national government confrontation. Thomas Ritchie considered the president’s conciliatory approach the correct one for the situation. But as more news of the events in South Carolina reached Washington, Jackson decided that the challenge to the federal government merited a stronger and more direct rebuttal.27 That response was a muscular proclamation addressed to the people of South Carolina, dated December 10, 1832, largely the product of a collaboration between the president and Edward Livingston. The proclamation was a ringing endorsement of a perpetual Union and a dramatic denunciation of nullification and secession. Directly challenging the compact theory Tyler held so dear, Jackson argued that the people, not the states, had created the Constitution and that they were represented collectively by him, the executive. The Constitution formed a government not a league, so a state-held right to withdraw from the Union or to veto federal laws did not exist. Citizens of each state had transferred their allegiance to the United States government via the Constitution.28 Jackson closed with a paternal plea to the citizens of South Carolina— they had been led astray by deluded men spouting a bogus theory. While their problems were not solely a product of the tariff, public opinion increasingly favored tariff relief, so there was little reason for extreme remedies. With a firmness of conviction that no American could doubt, Jackson declared he had a duty to enforce the law. He had no choice: “Disunion by armed force is treason.” The battle-scarred victor of New

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Orleans promised dire consequences if the nullification movement was not arrested.29 The presidential proclamation stirred controversy in Virginia politics as a sectional split developed within the state over the conflict between Jackson and South Carolina. Western Virginia, historically a pro-Union bastion, supported the president, while eastern Virginia regarded the nationalism of Jackson’s proclamation as a greater threat than the nullification ordinance. Indeed, the proclamation incensed those with republican sensibilities. Tyler had long maintained the compact theory of the creation of the federal government—that sovereign states constructed it—a theory Jackson had directly assailed. Tyler responded: “When . . . the President requires of me to admit that this is a unit gov’t . . . , that the people of all the Union acting as one community, and not the States acting as separate communities, adopted the constitution . . . , that all my allegiance is due to this gov’t and that to Virginia I owe none . . . , I say nay to these doctrines.” Jackson’s proclamation spurred the long march out of the Democratic party of republican southerners like Tyler.30 Virginians were groping toward a middle ground, condemning both Jackson and South Carolina and offering to mediate a settlement. The attitude of many was epitomized in a letter a resident of Southhampton County, George Blow, wrote to Congressman John Y. Mason. Blow thought South Carolinians were “deluded” but believed any coercive effort against the state would prompt southern states to rally to her defense and ultimately destroy the Union. In such a case Virginia might split into two states, east and west. Blow asserted that Jackson had been on the correct path with his annual message, the tone of which had pleased South Carolina, but the proclamation disrupted any momentum toward conciliation that might have grown out of the more temperate annual message.31 Behind the scenes, the compromise that George Blow feared Jackson had foiled was germinating, and Tyler was playing a role in bringing it about. After the proclamation’s issuance, Tyler approached Henry Clay and urged him to assume the leadership of the compromise effort. Clay was receiving similar advice from other quarters, and by mid-December he had a rough proposal for tariff reform that called for retaining current rates until 1840, at which point they would decline to a revenue level. It remained to be seen whether Clay’s plan would be acceptable to both the South Carolinians and northern manufacturers.32 Meanwhile, Virginia governor John Floyd, who was sympathetic to South Carolina—he had been the recipient of her electoral votes in the presidential contest of 1832—presented the nullification ordinance to the Virginia legislature. Near the end of December, 1832, a Virginia House subcommittee reported thirteen resolutions for action by the assembly.

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The resolutions criticized Jackson’s proclamation for being contrary to the Constitution and to Virginia doctrines, denounced the tariff, asked South Carolina to suspend the nullification ordinance, and instructed Virginia’s senators to support tariff reduction. Virginia, at least the eastern portion of the state, seemed more upset over Jackson’s nationalism than South Carolina’s radical states’ rights manifesto.33 The Jackson administration moved ahead with its own tariff reduction proposal, introduced by House Ways and Means Chairman Gulian Verplanck on January 8, 1833, the anniversary of Jackson’s victory at the battle of New Orleans. The bill returned duties to 1818 levels over a twoyear period. Writing to Governor Floyd two days later, Tyler took a dim view of the Verplanck bill. He wanted legislation that pacified all the affected parties, and the Verplanck bill seemed likely to anger the Northeast. Its reductions were severe, and their speedy implementation gave manufacturers little opportunity for adjustment. It also retained the “protective principle,” duty rates at protective levels, which southerners disliked.34 Reserving to himself a measure of credit for any compromise, Tyler told Floyd his early conversations with Clay were bearing fruit. He outlined the elements of a settlement: manufacturers and tariff proponents would surrender the protective principle—that is, they would accept a revenue rather than a protective tariff—in return for a gradual rather than a precipitate reduction in duties. Tyler stated that “time is now the chief stumbling block,” and since the South had endured high duties for years, it could tolerate a protective tariff a bit longer in exchange for the abandonment of protection. Tyler was confident that the crisis would pass, that Jackson’s aggressive approach would be repudiated: “the bold avowal of a determination to strike one of the old 13 out of existence by military force will be rebuked and chided.” He believed the Virginia assembly’s resolutions of December had caused the president to hesitate.35 But Tyler misjudged Jackson’s resolve. Despite advice from Van Buren and others not to upset states’ rights zealots, the president moved aggressively ahead. On January 16 he submitted his recommendations to the Congress as promised in the event of an impasse. Jackson stated that the administration had endeavored to meet South Carolina’s grievances, but compromise remained elusive, with South Carolina actively preparing for conflict, organizing a military force, and arranging to enforce the ordinance on the February 1 deadline. The president outlined his suggested response which became, when embodied in legislation, the Force Bill. Jackson declared, “laws are supreme and the Union indissoluble.”36 That same day Tyler reported the contents of Jackson’s message to Governor Floyd. His ongoing correspondence with Floyd is suggestive of a strong degree of sympathy for South Carolina. He reported that

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Calhoun had returned to the Senate and had given an “empassioned” rebuke to Jackson’s recommendations; he thought that Clay was likely to work with the grim-faced South Carolinian to end the crisis. Despite his (correct) prediction of a Clay-Calhoun deal, Tyler envisioned a bleak future: “If South Carolina be put down, then may each of the States yield all pretensions to sovereignty—we have a consolidated government and a master will soon arrive. . . . Idle to talk of preserving a republic for any length of time, with an uncontrolled power over the military exercised at the pleasure [by] the President.” Any hope for a settlement rested with Clay, and “If he strikes at all, it will be at a critical moment.” Tyler prophetically asserted that a change in the makeup of parties was also in the offing.37 In the same letter, Tyler expressed concern over another matter. The Virginia legislature had pushed back the date of its senatorial election from January 30 to February 16. Tyler rightly suspected that the delay was designed to provide time to build western opposition to his candidacy— Jackson’s Virginia partisans wanted to be rid of Tyler. As early as December 4, Thomas Ritchie had argued in his Richmond Enquirer for a consistently pro-Jackson Virginia senator. Western Virginia backed Jackson, and it was from that region that a challenger emerged, James McDowell of Rockbridge County. McDowell supported the proclamation and the end of slavery, so the candidates presented very different visions for the legislature to decide upon. Tyler wanted to remain in the Senate, and this challenge compounded his worries amid the ongoing political strife in Washington. Henry Clay was so concerned he wrote friends in Virginia to urge them to promote Tyler’s reelection. Clay’s solicitude for Tyler’s fate is evidence that the two enjoyed a good relationship and found common ground in their mutual distaste for Jackson’s policy.38 On January 21 William Wilkins of the Senate Judiciary Committee reported the Force Bill, and in Charleston a large nullification meeting resolved to suspend the ordinance in anticipation of congressional action on tariff reform. Suspension of the ordinance relieved much of the pressure brought on by the February 1 deadline. Unaware of the Charleston meeting, Tyler again wrote Floyd on January 22 and described the Force Bill as “a declaration of war” against South Carolina. He thought ultraFederalists like Daniel Webster were steering the administration into a hardline position.39 As Tyler prepared to speak on the Force Bill, the Virginia legislature voted on the resolutions proposed in December 1832. It approved those instructing senators to vote for tariff reform, condemning the proclamation, and asking that the nullification ordinance be suspended. It also passed resolutions denying that the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 were the basis for nullification and dispatching a commissioner to South

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Carolina. Benjamin Watkins Leigh was chosen to make the trip, carrying these resolutions and offering to mediate the dispute.40 In fashioning his speech, Tyler undoubtedly drew upon essays written by his former Senate colleague Littleton Waller Tazewell. Angered by Jackson’s proclamation, Tazewell wrote a series of essays published in the Norfolk Herald that reiterated the republican view of the American system of government. Tazewell argued that nullification was wrong but secession was permissible, a view in line with the compact theory of the government’s creation. In correspondence between the two prior to his speech, Tyler claimed to have digested most of the Tazewell essays and expressed an abhorrence of the Force Bill and Jackson’s proclamation, which he characterized as sweeping the Constitution aside and setting up a military dictatorship. He was dismayed that some southern senators chose to hand the North a victory by supporting the Force Bill, including, most distressingly, Tazewell’s successor and fellow Virginian William C. Rives. Tyler also worried that the delay in the Virginia senatorial election was a vote of no confidence in him by the state legislature.41 In this rather pessimistic frame of mind, Tyler spoke on the Force Bill four days later. Historians have generally praised this speech, one calling it “particularly effective” and another “the best speech of his senatorial career.” Addressing the Senate on February 6, 1833, Tyler began with a history lesson, typically casting a glance back through the mists of time for guidance in the present. Since the beginning of recorded history, he declared, two parties had vied for supremacy: one preferred an all-powerful government, while the other resisted power. He then traced the American Revolution and the inception of the American Republic, noting the emergence of parties split along the lines he had suggested and building a case at laborious length that Jackson’s Force Bill and proclamation evinced a spirit in keeping with those who advocated unlimited governmental power.42 Tyler touted the Articles of Confederation government at length, arguing that it was a good form of government that had served the nation well. He seemed to imply that the delegates to the convention that framed the Constitution had exceeded their instructions; they had been told to strengthen the Articles, not dismantle them. Nonetheless, they had created the Constitution, which Tyler conceded was a more refined, indeed beautiful, government than its predecessor. But he could not relinquish a fond reminiscence for the extreme autonomy states enjoyed under the Articles. All this was by way of preparing his audience for the crux of his argument against Jackson’s policy, and it amounted to a ringing affirmation of the compact theory of the Union’s formation and of states’ rights. Above all else, Tyler evinced the republican obsession with liberty, pre-

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serving and protecting it at all hazards. The republican fear of mankind’s inherent corruption emerged here again: “man, when invested with authority, is the most dangerous animal to his species.” All of recorded history taught this lesson, yet men seemed incapable of internalizing it and were fated to repeat the same mistakes. Virginia’s motto, sic semper tyrannis, instructed him to resist injustice, tyranny, and oppression, “to oppose all laws which are of a dangerous tendency, however small the minority in which I stand.” While many feared that South Carolina’s defiance indicated that the Union was apt to fly apart, Tyler worried more about the measures proposed to prevent that outcome. Nothing could be more telling. Although he wished to see the Union preserved, his concerns with the liberty-threatening precedents that Jackson was establishing trumped all else in his mind, and in this he heeded the ancient republican warning to beware of the executive who was ever anxious to exalt power at the expense of liberty. The entire country was drifting down a perilous path to consolidated government, led by the president. “Everything . . . is running into nationality,” Tyler sourly observed. “You cannot walk along the streets without seeing the word on almost every sign—national hotel, national boot black, national blacksmith, national oyster-house.” Tyler set his face against the rising embrace of nationalism with its consequent exaltation of the federal government’s role, reaffirming the compact theory of government: “The Government was created by the States, is amenable by the States, is preserved by the States, and may be destroyed by the States.” He felt compelled to take on the contrary vision as sketched by Jackson in his proclamation, as well as by others, that the Union was the creation of the people, not the states. Some had placed great emphasis on the constitutional phrase “We, the People,” but Tyler contended that the objects specified in the clause that followed that majestic phrase were lifted nearly intact from the Articles of Confederation, which was a way of associating those words with a document that allowed much state autonomy. Indeed, he concluded, “The terms ‘we, the people of the United States’ means nothing more or less than ‘we, the people of the States united.’” Jackson’s recent proclamation and message countenanced the “pernicious doctrine” that the government was national rather than federal, the people one mass and the states submerged in one nation. These assumptions led in turn to the conclusion that all sovereignty was vested in the national government. This Tyler utterly denounced—the federal government was the creation of sovereign states and existed at their pleasure. “They may strike you out of existence by a word; demolish the constitution, and scatter its fragments to the winds; and yet this Government, . . . declares the sovereignty of the States a mere nonentity. For my own part, I utterly renounce this doctrine. It is not only untrue and

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illogical, but anti-American.” In pursuit of this argument, Tyler went so far as to deny that he was a citizen of the United States. He was, he maintained, a Virginian who owed obedience to the laws of the federal government because Virginia had entered into a compact to form that government. But allegiance followed sovereignty, and Virginia was sovereign and as such commanded his allegiance. This rather singular instance of the kind of legalistic hair-splitting that drove Tyler’s political foes to distraction was simply another way of expressing the conviction that the states were the guardians of liberty, the watchdogs ever vigilant for abuses of power. “The States act as sentinels upon the watch-tower to give the alarm on the approach of tyranny; and, being organized into Government, stand ready after all other measures shall fail, and the only alternative is slavery or resistance, to resist.” The powers contained in the bill could not be safely entrusted to any executive—they placed too much power at his discretion, to the whim of one man. “I have an instinctive abhorrence to confiding extravagant powers in the hands of any one man.” Tyler’s republican belief in the fallibility of mankind could never stomach that. “The rules which are now to govern us are locked up in the recesses of the human heart, where no man can read them.” Because men were corruptible, one president might hang a man for an act while another might reward him. Worse still, fearful precedents were established that would tend to spur the drive for consolidation. If the states were gradually stripped of all their powers, the ultimate end would be no states at all. They would merely gum up the machinery of a consolidated government and so would disappear—but it was the effect this would have on the presidency that was the most fearsome specter in Tyler’s apocalyptic musings. Passing the bill would swell the power and importance of the executive. “Popular convulsions” would ensue, and to quell the constant party conflict, the distracted public would grope for a ready solution. The result? “The Presidential term would first be enlarged for a greater number of years; then extended for life; and the scepter would speedily be handed over to the lineal issue; a ‘hic jacet’ would be all that would remain to inform after ages that this had once been the land of the free.” The ultimate end of Jackson’s precedent-setting scheme of a consolidated government was a practical monarchy. Little wonder then that Tyler opposed the Force Bill, given this rather extreme vision of its consequences. His opposition was solidly grounded on fundamental republican tenets: the embrace of liberty; the suspicion of power, especially entrusting power to the executive; the necessity of maintaining a check on the possible rise of power, which for Tyler was the maintenance of state sovereignty; the corruptibility of human nature; and the power of money. Again and again, these themes that character-

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ized American political culture in the eighteenth century surfaced in John Tyler’s political consciousness. The senator offered South Carolina only a mild reproof, interestingly, deprecating the nullification doctrine without specifically mentioning it. On secession, Tyler was ambiguous: he condemned Jackson for unilaterally denying secession was possible, contending that this was an issue for Congress to determine. He then let the question drop, saying that it was not a propitious moment to agitate the issue. Clearly though, secession was the final remedy for disaffection under Tyler’s compact theory, and indeed he was to embrace the Confederacy’s exit from the Union in 1860–61. As for solving the crisis, Tyler expressed a willingness to grant manufacturers “ample time” if they would surrender protective tariff levels, that is, reductions would occur gradually perhaps over the course of years. This would allow American manufacturers a grace period to prepare to meet foreign competition on a more equal footing. He concluded Jackson had erred in not maintaining the more conciliatory tone of his December message—had he done so, a settlement would have been quietly achieved.43 Tyler’s speech did not harm his reelection chances, indeed it may well have helped, for the Virginia legislature returned him to the Senate. On February 20 the Senate passed the Force Bill as opponents stalked out of the chamber in protest. Tyler preferred to be on record against the bill and remained rooted at his desk, casting the sole recorded vote in opposition, a characteristic gesture representative of his independence and of his deeply held convictions of an elected representative’s obligations and personal honor. Jackson’s hard lobbying ensured House passage of the Force Bill on March 1. Calhoun embraced Clay’s compromise tariff, and that alliance got it through both Houses.44 Jackson signed both bills on March 2. Two days later the Washington Telegraph published the text of the Force Bill, surrounded by black borders to signify mourning. The reaction of Duff Green’s Telegraph mirrored the anger those with republican sensibilities felt toward Jackson: they were dismayed that the president’s strong nationalism had seemingly conquered his states’ rights sympathies. Tyler’s disaffection with the president grew as his regard for Henry Clay increased, for bringing off the compromise deal. Now his path to the Whig party was clear.45 Jackson gave states’ rights supporters little time to catch their collective breath. He decided to remove government deposits from the Bank of the United States, a policy alluded to in his message to Congress in December, 1832. This action provoked states’ righters for several reasons. The treasury secretary was responsible for government deposits; he reported to Congress on their status and under the law was responsible for any movement of funds from one financial institution to another.

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Inasmuch as the treasury secretary had been given these duties, it was as yet unclear whether the president had any authority to order him to do anything with the deposits. Indeed, many felt that the treasury secretary had substantial autonomy. Drawing on history, many believed that the Founding Fathers meant to keep the “power of the purse” out of the president’s control.46 On September 18, 1833, Jackson convened a cabinet meeting and informed the assembled department heads of his decision to immediately remove government deposits from the Bank of the United States. The policy was announced in the administration organ, the Washington Globe, on September 20; an official order was issued five days later setting October 1 as the date for removal to begin. Jackson had to overcome considerable resistance within his own cabinet to effect this change. Martin Van Buren, Lewis Cass, and Louis McLane all counseled delay; Van Buren worried that immediate removal would provoke the South. Even more significantly, the treasury secretary, William J. Duane, refused either to obey Jackson’s order to remove the deposits or to resign. He defied the president for two reasons: he believed state banks were a less secure repository for government funds than the national bank, and he felt that congressional approval of removal was necessary because he was required by law to report to Congress on the deposits.47 What could Jackson do? It was not certain that he could do anything. Some believed the Senate had to be consulted in some fashion before a president could remove a recalcitrant cabinet member. The autonomy granted the treasury secretary in the legislation creating the Treasury Department, a sop to republican fears of executive control of the “purse,” also made ousting Duane tricky. Previous presidents had adroitly avoided the issue, but thanks to Duane’s obstinacy Jackson had little room to maneuver. So the Hero of New Orleans chose the only available option—a frontal assault. On September 23 Jackson fired Duane and installed the more pliant Roger Taney, and it was Taney who began the process of removing the deposits. Coupled with his tendency to make recess appointments, Jackson’s plucky action infuriated the Senate.48 The opposition press exploded in condemnation. The Philadelphia Commercial Herald predicted that once Jackson finished destroying the nation’s financial system, the newly created presidential powers “may be employed next in fastening upon us a despotism as rank, and a yoke as heavy, as the serfs of the Old World were ever doomed to endure and wear.” The National Intelligencer spied evidence of an incipient dictatorship: “His military habits hang still about him, and he will bear no rival near the throne. . . . As Louis of France said, in the plenitude of despotic glory, ‘I am the State,’ our Executive openly proclaims, I am the Government.” The Richmond Whig called Jackson’s removal of funds “a gross and daring usurpation of

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power, not only not delegated, but expressly withheld!” The Whig argued that the charter of the bank expressly designated the treasury secretary as the sole official with power over the deposits. The framers of the Constitution wanted to keep control of government funds out of presidential hands because chief executives with unlimited power over public money were apt to turn tyrant.49 Bank of the United States President Nicholas Biddle accepted Jackson’s challenge and chose a perverse way to rally the country to the bank’s defense. At an October 7 meeting of the bank’s board of directors, Biddle announced his intention to drastically curb loans and various financial instruments, betting the economic hardship that was sure to follow would force Jackson to restore the government’s deposits.50 Jackson’s precipitate act generated political turmoil in Virginia. One historian characterized it thus, “Virginia society was torn asunder . . . social harmony was disturbed, and friendships were dissolved.” Gov. John Floyd criticized the removal policy, saying that the bank was entitled to its rights until the charter expired, and an anti-Jackson coalition formed in the state legislature comprised of states’ rights supporters, nullification proponents, and national Republicans. Despite their obvious policy differences, a common enemy helped them unite—Jackson and his stretching of the previously understood parameters of the presidency. On December 26, 1833, a rally reportedly of more than one thousand people was held at Richmond in the House of Delegates Hall. Thirteen resolutions were adopted, amounting to an indictment of the president’s course. During the Nullification Crisis, a sectional split had developed in Virginia, with the east denouncing Jackson, while the west supported the president, but now both regions joined in condemning him.51 Tyler’s reaction to removal might be thought predictable—he would condemn it. And indeed, he eventually did so, but not before a period of indecision. Writing to his former senatorial colleague and ongoing mentor Littleton Tazewell on December 3, 1833, Tyler asked him for advice on political matters. The only opinion Tyler expressed on removal was that he expected Duane to be crushed by the Jacksonians, and he voiced his usual gloom about the ongoing slide of the country into corruption. Later in the month, on Christmas Day, Tyler again wrote Tazewell. He went over the question from both sides of the argument. He contended government revenues were no longer safe if the treasury secretary could place the deposits wherever he wished, perhaps into his own or the president’s pockets. Also, restoring the deposits would alleviate the economic crisis brought on by Biddle’s tight money policy. But Tyler worried about the consequences of reinvigorating the national bank. If the bank decided to fight for recharter, “might we not, by restoring the deposits arm it with a power of inflicting great injury on the community; and can we be certain

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that it would not so use its means as to produce the greatest state of embarrassment and suffering?” Of course the bank had already embarked on just such a path. Tyler was torn by his distrust of the bank and his republican fears of executive control of government revenue. He had yet to make up his mind. He closed with a series of questions to Tazewell: “Is the Bank to keep up the struggle for the next three years? or are my fears in this behalf unfounded? If it will continue the struggle, will not a restoration of the deposits increase its ability and render its spasms more disturbing and hurtful to the country?”52 The Richmond anti-Jackson rally occurred the following day. Tazewell chaired a similar confab in Norfolk and thus placed his influential (with Tyler) imprimatur on the condemnation of Jackson. Tazewell was being brought forward as a candidate for governor, and his success would be a great blow to Jackson partisans in Virginia. He was elected governor on January 7, 1834, and during that same month Thomas Gilmer introduced resolutions in the Virginia legislature condemning Jackson for engaging in a power grab. This overwhelming anti-Jackson sentiment based on a republican concern with excessive executive power, especially as expressed by Tazewell, helped Tyler come to a decision. Writing to congratulate Tazewell on his election two days after the contest, Tyler said, “my opinion is fully and decisively made up on the subject of the deposits.”53 Meanwhile, the battle had been joined in the Senate, where the national Republicans still held a slim advantage in numbers. Taney sent Congress a defense of removal wherein he roundly condemned the bank for electioneering, suborning Congress by bribery, interfering with the process of reducing the government’s debt, and other malfeasance. Henry Clay took the lead role in responding to the Jackson administration, introducing on December 26, 1833, a resolution demanding that the president be censured. As for Taney’s report, the Senate, Tyler included, voted on February 5, 1834, to reject its conclusions.54 By February Congress was flooded with petitions begging for relief from depressed conditions brought on by Biddle’s retrenchment policy. The National Intelligencer reported that northern cities were wallowing in economic hardship. Numerous bankruptcies were reported in New York City, and thousands of workmen were unemployed as a result of the contraction. The Richmond Whig said “a long and gloomy period of suffering” was ahead and lamented “that this havoc is the work of one man’s despotic will.” Vice President Van Buren wrote on February 10, “Never could it have been said with as much truth that heaven & earth & the other place too are rained to defeat him.” Jackson’s press allies rallied to his side. The Richmond Enquirer asserted that the panic and recession were not an argument in favor of the bank, rather a confirmation of Jackson’s contention

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that the bank had too much power. When that power involved itself in politics, liberty was in danger. The Washington Globe said restoration was a sham issue masking the real goal of rechartering the bank.55 With all this political controversy and economic distress swirling about, Tyler waited impatiently for instructions from the Virginia legislature. In a February letter to his wife, Tyler speculated on the possible course of his fellow senator and Jacksonian William C. Rives. Tyler thought Rives should obey the legislature’s instructions but believed Rives’s resignation was not out of the question if the legislature voted to urge restoration of deposits. Within days, the Virginia assembly instructed its senators to support restoration of the deposits. Rives promptly resigned and was replaced by Jackson foe Benjamin Watkins Leigh.56 Since Tyler had historically taken a dim view of the bank, his opposition to the removal of the deposits, the course he finally chose, would on the face of it seem inexplicable. But Tyler favored policies that effected change gradually rather than abruptly, supporting, for example, phasedin reductions of the tariff over a number of years, which allowed manufacturers time to prepare for foreign imports at more competitive price levels. Moderation was preferable to sudden, abrupt transitions that might create grievances that would frustrate pacification, the true hope of political compromise. Tyler also was possessed of the republican fear that violations of written compacts or charters, as the bank had with the U.S. government, were dangerous, a sign of societal decay eventually fatal to liberty. In addition, republicanism traditionally emphasized the importance of framing a system of government that kept control of the Treasury out of the chief executive’s clutches, whether monarch or president. Absolute control of the purse enabled a despot to finance unpopular wars at whim, with the people rendered powerless to interfere. Britain’s long struggle for parliamentary supremacy was largely a battle over the ability of the king to unilaterally impose taxes, to raise money without the people’s sanction. In the eighteenth century Robert Walpole had famously used the Exchequer as his power base from which he manipulated crown patronage and perks to tame Parliament, granting Britain a welcome respite from political strife. Of course British oppositionists thought this political management tyrannical, and it was their suspicion of the treasury that infected American political culture. Such feelings enlivened the debate on the creation of the Treasury Department in 1789 as the first Congress under the Constitution struggled to form a new government. In that debate James Madison took the lead in urging that a single person be given direction of the Treasury, as opposed to Congress itself or an oversight board as had been typical under the Articles of Confederation. Madison’s proposals awakened fears of a “Robinocracy,” of a Treasury

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ministry’s moneyed tentacles controlling Congress, perhaps at the insistence of either a tyrannically inclined minister or president. Despite these concerns, Madison’s view prevailed, probably because the financial chaos that typified the Continental Congress was still fresh in memory. But concessions to republican sensibilities were made. A proposal empowering the treasury secretary to “digest and report” plans on financial management was amended to “digest and prepare,” for republicanminded congressmen did not want that department exercising influence in Congress and usurping powers reserved for the House. The Treasury was required to report directly to Congress rather than through the president, the only department so shackled. Its officers were prohibited from involvement in business or trade ventures or from dabbling in government securities or land. Always republicans most feared an attack on liberty from the executive or members of the executive branch acting as the willing agents of a tyrannical president. Tyler had absorbed these eighteenth-century republican prejudices. The Virginia legislature’s instructions opposing removal no doubt reinforced that mindset, as did the ongoing economic suffering in the country. Given these facts, his opposition to removal is quite understandable.57 His denunciation of Jackson’s removal policy, delivered to the Senate on February 24, 1834, touched on many republican shibboleths and in many respects was emblematic of the continued relevance of the republican lessons of the eighteenth century for Tyler. They formed an interpretive framework through which he judged political policies and events—always he peered into the mists of the past for guidance in the present. The corruptibility of human nature, the power of money and patronage to effect that corruption, the specter of a tyrannical president, the importance of maintaining the Constitution and resisting latitudinarian precedents, the inevitability of societal decay—these traditional republican themes, so much a part of American political culture during the eighteenth century, formed the muscle and sinew of Tyler’s speech. The senator argued that Treasury Secretary Roger Taney had violated the provisions of the 1789 act organizing the Treasury Department. He referred specifically to the language republicans had demanded in 1789 to curb the secretary’s control of government revenue, that is, to “digest and prepare” plans. Tyler maintained the act gave the secretary a “limited sphere” of responsibilities; his sole “theatre” was the Treasury, where he was empowered to act as a financier, which in Tyler’s mind seems to have been little more than a caretaker over government funds. Taney had violated the republican conception of a treasury secretary’s proper, and strictly circumscribed, duties by unilaterally implementing his plans without reference to Congress. He expanded his role to “Financier— judge—juror—executioner.”

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Tyler concluded that Taney’s actions were bad policy, even if permissible. Revenue had declined, and the Treasury was saddled with debt associated with severing the government’s relationship with the bank. The country was plunged into depression and public credit suffered. Taney was guilty of bad management and of an abuse of power. In a telling statement, Tyler summed up his feelings on the latter mistake. “Sir, I have been reared in an abhorrence of arbitrary power; and whether exerted by the imperial monarch on his throne, surrounded by his myrmidons, or by an official agent in our free republics, that feeling still predominates. I conclude, then, that the Secretary had no authority under the law to have acted as he has done, and that he has therefore been guilty of a flagrant assumption of power.” This usurpation-of-power theme formed the basis of Tyler’s characteristically republican attack on President Jackson. As a corporate entity, the national bank enjoyed the same rights as an individual under the law, and if its rights could be violated with impunity because it was unpopular, what was to prevent an individual from a similar fate. Jackson could potentially move extralegally against anything or anyone he deemed a threat or whom he disliked. Even more frightening from the republican perspective, Jackson controlled the public purse, placing public revenue in state banks of his own choosing, creating thereby “an army of retainers” in the guise of the officers and directors of these institutions. Powers had been assumed that were not sanctioned by either the Constitution or the law. Tyler admonished the Senate to beware of that dreaded republican bugbear, executive patronage: “Patronage is the sword and cannon by which war may be made on the liberty of the human race. . . . Money is more powerful than armed men.” Money and patronage, those irresistible seducers of human nature, were more insidiously threatening to liberty than a presidentially directed army. “They work silently and almost unseen. They make sure their advances by corruption. They gradually undermine the public virtue. . . . The edifice of human liberty” was “scattered into atoms.” Forty thousand government officials already stood prepared to do Jackson’s bidding—to augment that colossal power with control of the currency was to clothe the president with the powers of a king. Rather than vociferously condemning Jackson’s firing of William J. Duane as yet another usurpation of power, Tyler adopted a more measured tone. The president’s power to remove officials had been debated in 1789, and he noted that then, distinguished political leaders had been on both sides of the question. Tyler concluded that if the president used the removal power to rid the government of incompetent and unfaithful staffers, it was beneficial. However, if the power was employed to reward party hacks and punish political foes, it could jeopardize the stability of

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the government. Thus Tyler conceded that the president could remove cabinet and other executive-branch officials but condemned Jackson’s manner of doing so, famously labeled the “spoils” system. Tyler asserted that the public interest suffered when novices replaced experienced public servants. The prospect of opening up thousands of government sinecures after each presidential contest would render elections increasingly bitter. The president’s power would grow immensely since he was the gatekeeper for scores of patronage posts, and this vast influence could eventually become law. Interestingly, Tyler seemed to back off a bit from his heretofore staunch opposition to a national bank. He objected to the current bank, he maintained, because it was unconstitutional, but if the Constitution permitted it, “no man, with the experience of the past, could well doubt the propriety of a well-regulated and well-guarded bank.” He went on to recommend the restoration of the deposits, dismissing fears some had raised that doing so would be a prelude to a restoration of the bank. He also suggested the wisdom of referring the entire issue of a national bank to the states in the form of a constitutional amendment. Continued bank agitation had roiled the currency and produced too much turmoil in the country, Tyler declared, and it was time to remove the issue from the politicians and place it with the people. He thus anticipated those who in the future would propose leaving issues too hot for Washington, like slavery’s expansion, to the people of the territories. Was this a tepid endorsement of the national bank? If so, it was decidedly tepid since the prospects of a bank amendment clearing Congress and winning the required threefourths of the states were grim indeed. Tyler’s suggestion was probably an example of a southerner pushing the amendment process as a method for disposing of divisive issues. Still, his words provided a glimmer of hope that, under the right circumstances, he could accept a national bank. Tyler concluded with a typical paean to the Jeffersonian republican tradition, denouncing on the way the Jackson-dominated Democratic party. He criticized Jacksonians for arguing Thomas Jefferson would have approved of the removal policy. Nothing, Tyler asserted with the confidence of the son of a Jefferson intimate, could be further from the truth— Jefferson always opposed arbitrary power and indeed had allowed the first national bank to pass peacefully out of existence in 1811, doing nothing to speed its demise. As for the Democratic party, which Tyler called the Jackson party, it was a “nondescript, patch-work, mosaic” party that “changes its principles as the chameleon its color” based on the current line emanating from the “Presidential orb.” Although Jackson’s minions claimed to be the party of republicans, they were, in Tyler’s opinion, not his republican party. He belonged to the party “that . . . brought Mr. Jefferson into power—which rests upon the federative principle—which

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rebukes every assumption of authority not warranted by the constitution—which proclaims the inviolability of law, and the strict observance of public faith.” Tyler was clearly separating himself from a Democratic party under the sway of Andrew Jackson.58 A little over a month after Tyler’s speech, the Senate acted on the censure motion. On March 28, 1834, the Senate voted to censure a sitting president, “a severe blow to Jackson’s pride,” according to Jackson’s admiring biographer. That same day, before the vote, Tyler wrote his brother-in-law correctly predicting approval of the censure motion. The issue, said Tyler, was simple, “nothing short of an actual change in the character of the government.” If the president controlled the purse, liberty was at an end. “The presidential office swallows up all power, and the president becomes every inch a king.” Given his stark outlook, Tyler voted with the majority for censure.59 Jackson responded with his April 18 (dated April 15) protest against censure. This changed nothing and may even have harmed his cause in Virginia, where the spring elections ended in triumph for the antiJackson coalition. Tyler wrote Tazewell on May 9 and boasted of the role they had played in the defeat of Jacksonians in Virginia, crediting their dogged resistance to the president’s unconstitutional measures for the outcome.60 Tyler was not finished with the national bank. At the end of the session, a motion was carried that called on the Senate Finance Committee to investigate the bank during the congressional recess and determine whether violations of the charter had occurred. Committee members given this responsibility included Tyler, Thomas Ewing, Willie Mangum, William Wilkins, and Daniel Webster. They were to visit the bank’s headquarters in Philadelphia and some of its branches.61 Webster ceded the task of writing the report to Tyler and Mangum. The Virginian did most of the work, so much so that the report came to be known as the “Tyler report.” But Webster had no intention of allowing an unfavorable report, and he “was able to shape the substance of the investigation and to blunt conclusions.” He was in close contact with Nicholas Biddle, so close that Webster provided a draft response for the bank president to use in reply to the investigating committee’s letter of inquiry; Biddle used Webster’s draft virtually word for word. Tyler was unaware of these behind-the-scenes machinations. The resulting report, issued in December, 1834, largely exonerated the bank of serious improprieties.62 Tyler was duped by Webster. Known as a consistent foe of the bank, he was unwittingly maneuvered into being the principal author of a probank report. This lent the report an aura of impartiality and a corresponding degree of credibility. Perhaps his frantic concern with

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executive “usurpations” clouded Tyler’s judgment. The report may well mark an important stage in his relationship with the Whig party, for he had, perhaps a bit unwittingly, supported a key pillar of the American system, the national bank, despite his constitutional objections. Significantly, Tyler defended the report from slashing attacks by Thomas H. Benton, which must have impressed northern and probank Whigs. Tyler’s favorable report may have boosted his standing with the Whigs and probably contributed to his eventual vice-presidential nomination; he was selected as a vice-presidential candidate by several state conventions even in 1836.63 The Virginian’s exit from the Senate took place rather suddenly, and the reasons for his resignation were supremely ironic given his personal history. Democrats were determined to erase or “expunge” the 1834 censure of Jackson from the Senate journal. Sen. Thomas H. Benton introduced a resolution to effect this on February 18, 1835, and while Benton’s gambit initially failed, the stage was set for a protracted battle to rescue Jackson’s reputation.64 The 1835 spring elections in Virginia went poorly for the new Whig coalition as Democrats reclaimed the state legislature. They immediately declared their intention, at the next state legislative session, to vote for instructions requiring Virginia’s senators to support Benton’s expunging resolution. The Richmond Enquirer began a long campaign to support this goal. Tyler and his senatorial colleague, Benjamin Watkins Leigh, were placed in an untenable position. Both had begun their careers with ringing affirmations of the doctrine of instruction; in 1812 they had criticized their predecessors, Senators Brent and Giles, for failing to obey (or uphold) instructions from the Virginia legislature. Now the doctrine that they helped enshrine in the Virginia republican ideological pantheon was turned against them. Leigh decided to defy any instructions, the Richmond Whig announcing that he would not be instructed out of his seat. Since the Constitution mandated that the Senate keep a journal, Leigh argued that altering it was unconstitutional. He wrote Tyler that “If I shall be instructed to vote for expunging or rescinding the resolution of the Senate disapproving General Jackson’s conduct in removing the public deposits from the Bank, I shall obey the instruction, when I shall be prepared to write myself fool, knave, and slave, and not before—When I shall be prepared to obey an instruction to vote for the abolition of the Senate, and with it of the State sovereignties—when I shall be willing to fix the monarchical doctrines of the protest upon this nation, and then, in effect, to subvert the Republic.” Leigh acknowledged to Tyler that because of his emphatic defense of instructions in 1812, his defiance now would look hypocritical. He knew his political career would be at an end. Tyler, still relatively young and not

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anxious to quit public life, puzzled over a way out of the noose Democrats were fashioning for him.65 In December the Virginia legislature began its session, and the Democrats soon introduced a resolution instructing the senators to expunge the 1834 censure. The Whig press accused the Virginia legislature of being Jackson’s toady. The National Intelligencer declared: “This is carrying man-worship to the extreme. . . . Is this the old republican, democratic State of Virginia, habitually jealous of power, and so long distinguished by her attachment to the true principles of liberty?” The Intelligencer argued that a senator was a representative of all the people, not just Virginia; as such, a parochial directive should not overrule everything. Further, the doctrine of instruction was interfering with the constitutionally mandated six-year senatorial term.66 The Whig press also described the expunging effort as monarchical, giving examples from history of tyrannical kings attacking legislative journals and documents. Expunging was likened to the actions of James I, who had ordered a parliamentary protest crossed out of that body’s journal, and to Lord Hillsborough’s order to the Massachusetts legislature to rescind a 1768 circular letter. Whigs sought to create a vivid caricature of Andrew Jackson as a tyrannical monarch bent on subverting the independence of the Senate. Such a portrayal fit into the suspicious republican mindset toward the executive.67 While the Whig press raved, Democrats tried to ease Tyler out of his seat—he was offered a circuit-court appointment if he would resign. Tyler regarded the offer as something of an affront; it was clearly a step down, and it offended his sense of propriety. Soon after, John Hampton Pleasants, editor of the Richmond Whig, told Tyler that he faced an unpalatable choice. If he obeyed the instructions, he would be tarred as an officelover devoid of principle. If he disobeyed the instructions and remained in the Senate, he would be politically ruined because Virginians would not tolerate defiance of instructions. Remaining in Washington would also damage the Virginia Whig party in forthcoming elections. Pleasants advised Tyler to resign unless he wished to follow Leigh into political oblivion. Others urged Tyler to keep his seat. James Barbour wrote that a Tyler resignation would reduce the Senate to a pliant tool of Jackson, wrecking the Constitution. Gen. William Gordon, whom Tyler had written for advice, also urged retaining the seat.68 Buffeted by friendly and hostile press accounts, and deluged with advice, Tyler hesitated, but he seemed to be leaning toward resignation. The advice he had received from Pleasants indicated that resignation preserved his political viability in Virginia and would not harm Whig prospects in the spring elections. Henry Clay was anxious to retain Tyler in the Senate, though, and upon learning that Tyler was considering

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resignation, he urged Thomas Gilmer to enlist other Virginians to approach Tyler and talk him out of it. Clay said Tyler’s friends throughout the nation thought resignation was the wrong option.69 On February 11, 1836, the Virginia House of Delegates adopted the resolution instructing the state’s U.S. senators to expunge. Four days later Tyler informed his son of his decision: resignation. After the Virginia Senate passed the instruction resolutions on February 20, Tyler’s old mentor Littleton Tazewell, now governor, refused to transmit the instructions. But the Democrats were not to be thwarted by that gambit, and the legislature’s presiding officers dispatched the instructions to the senators. On February 29, Tyler resigned with two letters, one to the U.S. Senate and one to the Virginia legislature. Tyler explained he was resigning because obeying the instructions would violate the Constitution, which required that the Senate keep a journal of its proceedings, and it was important to liberty that a reliable record of the debates be maintained lest the Senate become a “secret conclave.” He noted the irony, that he had been following the Virginia legislature’s instructions when he voted to censure Jackson in 1834, now the very thing he was instructed to expunge. Tyler concluded that the doctrine of instruction had become a tool of faction, and he pledged to uphold the Constitution. “The only object of my political worship shall be the Constitution of my country.” Tyler wanted his children to know that no office ought to be held at the cost of honor.70 The Whig press had hoped for a fight and was dismayed by Tyler’s resignation. The National Intelligencer thought the Constitution had been trampled and wrote of Tyler, “His motives we must respect; but we cannot other wise than wish that he could, to the satisfaction of his own conscience, have acted otherwise.” The Farquier City (Va.) Independent Register wrote, “We have great respect for MR. TYLER, and do not intend to censure his motives, while we express our disapprobation of his course, in giving his sanction to the principle of obedience to legislative instructions.” The Norfolk Herald editorialized, “We find no fault with Mr. Tyler for resigning; but however much we may venerate the right of instruction, we could have excused him, in such a case as this, if he had disobeyed.” This was not the last time the Whig press would be unhappy with Tyler. Had he stayed in the Senate, his political viability in Virginia would have been at an end, as it was for Benjamin Leigh, who clung defiantly to his seat, resigning later for allegedly unrelated reasons but politically ruined in Virginia. The Democrats had triumphed. After Tyler’s resignation, they promptly elected William C. Rives as his successor. Rives had resigned in 1834 after objecting to instructions to support restoration of the deposits. Now Rives was redeemed and could serve out Tyler’s term if, as the

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National Intelligencer quipped, “he be not, in the intervening period. . . , with consistent absurdity, instructed out again.”71 In the end, John Tyler’s feud with Andrew Jackson seems all the more remarkable given the similarity of their visions of American society and the proper role of the American government. Both men deplored national banks and a national debt and desired a revenue tariff, the preservation of domestic slavery, and states’ rights. The break came because of Tyler’s republican conception of the proper role and function of the executive branch. He viewed the president as a formidable threat to liberty, manifesting the traditional republican distrust of the executive. So often the attack on liberty had come from that quarter—from Caesar, to Charles I, to Walpole and George III, and to John Adams, who had signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Certainly Tyler remembered Jackson’s reckless Florida invasion in 1818, a record that made his presidential overstepping seem all the more ominous. Jackson’s highhanded actions— dismissing cabinet secretaries, asserting control over the Treasury, vetoing with abandon—established precedents that Tyler feared would gradually alter the character of the American government, increasing the power of the president and in turn that of the national government. These precedents were consequently one more step down the road of societal decay to a consolidated government, a commercial and industrial society, and a corrupted populace. Tyler’s pronouncements were hyperbolic and apocalyptic on occasion, but it is easy to understand why his tone bordered on the hysterical. He sought in vain to awaken his countrymen to what he saw as an awful truth: the people’s president was unconsciously trampling the very safeguards of liberty that made republican government possible and paving the way for consolidation and tyranny.

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Honor, Consistency, and the Presidency In one important respect, John Tyler’s departure from the Senate was a blessing, for it allowed him to focus on restoring his always perilous financial condition. His law practice needed to be rebuilt, and he moved to Williamsburg to better accomplish that goal. Politics, though, remained his passion. In the 1836 election Tyler was the choice for vice president of the new Whig party in several states. He received forty-seven electoral votes, winning South Carolina, Maryland, Tennessee, and Georgia. His showing was a tribute to the prominence his principled stand in the Senate had gained for him. In April, 1838, Tyler was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for the Williamsburg district and was later chosen Speaker, another recognition of his enhanced status.1 The following year Tyler ran for his old Senate seat, now occupied by conservative Democrat William C. Rives, a supporter of state banks who split with the Van Buren administration over an Independent Treasury. Angry at Rives’s apostasy, Virginia Democrats nominated John Y. Mason for the seat. Many Whigs were anxious to appease Rives and his conservative colleagues because they would be valuable allies in forthcoming elections. Henry Clay backed Rives in the senatorial contest for this reason, practical politics trumping his friendship with Tyler.2 In the ensuing contest, neither candidate could secure the required majority through some twenty-eight ballots. Considerable pressure was brought to bear on Tyler to give way for Rives, but he refused, displaying his familiar obstinacy. The assembly was forced to adjourn without choosing a senator. Yet the episode did not generate any lasting anger between

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the principals. Tyler strongly backed Clay for the 1840 Whig presidential nomination, and Clay continued to regard the Virginian as a friend. Rives was eventually elected senator after Tyler withdrew his bid, and he later became one of the few Tyler allies in the Senate.3 The Whigs were determined to defeat Martin Van Buren in 1840, and to achieve that goal it was necessary to firmly unite the party’s factions. Whigs engaged in the same stunts and sloganeering that had proven so successful for Democrats. No platform was adopted; nationalist Whigs and republican or states’ rights Whigs each stood for their own principles. The presidential ticket reflected the desire for harmony. A military hero, William H. Harrison, a man of amorphous political opinions whose chief attraction was that his career reminded voters of Andrew Jackson, was chosen as the presidential candidate. Harrison was from Ohio, so to appease southern Whigs and to win Virginia, John Tyler was named the vicepresidential candidate.4 Clay had been passed over, much to the chagrin and surprise of both himself and Tyler. Tyler’s confidant Littleton Tazewell sent him a prescient warning: Harrison was elderly, and if he died, Tyler would find himself at the head of a Whig coalition with little to hold it together beyond opposition to Andrew Jackson and his chosen successor. Tyler would be a committed republican struggling against a strong, even dominant, nationalist faction.5 Seeking to father an intraparty fissure that would disrupt the Whig juggernaut, a committee of Democrats from Henrico County, Virginia, queried Tyler for an explanation of his beliefs. Tyler’s response to the committee, in a letter dated October 3, 1840, not only was carefully crafted to allay Whig concerns but also raised expectations, unjustified given his personal history, about his willingness to countenance a national bank. If the Whigs won the election, they planned to resurrect the national bank, long a cardinal facet of their program. The Democrats asked Tyler for his opinion. Did Congress have the power to incorporate a national bank? Was chartering a new one a good idea? If he became president would Tyler veto a bank bill? The Democrats knew of Tyler’s antibank record and hoped to highlight Whig schisms.6 Tyler’s response was a skillful equivocation, perhaps in retrospect a little too skillful, a riposte that maintained his reputation for consistency while leaving enough wiggle room for probank Whigs to believe that in certain circumstances he might approve a national bank. Tyler endorsed remarks that Harrison had earlier made in Dayton, Ohio. Simply put, Harrison argued that a bank was unconstitutional because it was not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. However, Congress could create a bank if it would assist Congress in carrying out its own constitutional obligations. By upholding the Harrison position, Tyler endorsed, in

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effect, that loathsome ‘necessary and proper’ exception, the basis of John Marshall Supreme Court decisions that expanded federal power. Tyler did not acknowledge this, though, which left room for confusion. Instead he referred the Democrats to his antibank congressional speeches in 1819 and 1832, stressing his earlier opposition to the bank, immediately after alluding to and approving of Harrison’s exception.7 Tyler had parried the Democratic gambit by both endorsing and not endorsing a national bank. He even preserved a veneer of consistency. The Richmond Enquirer called this pronouncement “an awful squinting” toward support for a bank. Whig newspapers later pointed to the letter as proof that Tyler would sign a bank bill. In his desire to defeat the Democrats and please his Whig allies, Tyler outfoxed himself; he was in an untenable position. He would now be open to accusations of inconsistency, a charge devastating to personal honor, no matter which path he followed if he was called upon to deal with the bank issue. Consistency demanded that Tyler oppose a national bank. But the letter opened the door to acceptance, meaning that to be consistent, Whigs expected him to support a bank. Tyler prided himself on consistency; creating confusion and doubt about exactly what his position was on the bank might help win an election, but if Tyler became president, nationalist Whigs could now claim that he had expressed a willingness to accept a bank. And John Tyler loathed the national bank. But, of course, there was little to worry about; Harrison was the man elected president.8 William H. Harrison died on Sunday, April 4, 1841, of bilious pleurisy, or pneumonia. He was sixty-eight years old and had been ill eight days. Harrison habitually rose early and enjoyed a morning stroll, often stopping at the local market to do some of his own shopping. A week previous he had been caught in a sudden spring rain and developed a chill that progressed to pneumonia. By then Harrison had been physically worn down from the entreaties of scores of Whig office seekers. After twelve years out of power, Whig minions ignored a party creed that sneered at the “spoils” of office and hungrily flocked to the White House, where they laid siege to the fragile sexagenarian. Exhausted by the crowds that packed the mansion, Harrison’s stroll in the cold drizzle pushed him over the edge and into eternity.9 With the venerable Indian fighter gone, the federal government faced an unprecedented event: the death of a sitting president. The cabinet dispatched Fletcher Webster, chief clerk to his father, Secretary of State Daniel Webster, to deliver the sad tidings to Tyler, who was in Williamsburg, Virginia. Young Webster made very good time for the era, as did Tyler returning to Washington. The new president arrived at the capital in the early hours of April 6 and went to Brown’s Hotel. The cabinet called on him around noon. Tyler, overcome by the melancholy circumstances

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surrounding his ascension and anxious to reassure the country of the government’s continuity and stability, asked the members of the cabinet to retain their places. He came to regret this decision, and at least one prominent Whig felt the cabinet should have submitted their resignations, but the dismal situation and the novelty of the crisis fostered a desire for order above all other considerations. To remove any doubt about his status, Tyler took the oath of office again, which was administered by William Cranch, chief judge of the District of Columbia Circuit Court.10 Whigs wondered how the elevation of a staunch republican to the presidency would affect their agenda. Some Whig newspapers were resolutely optimistic. “President TYLER is a Whig—a true Whig,” declared the National Intelligencer. The New York Courier and Enquirer called Tyler “a highminded, honorable, and frank gentleman, and a whig.” The Richmond Whig said the presidential mantle had fallen on one “whose whole soul is devoted to the cause.” The Charleston Courier published Tyler’s Henrico letter of October, 1840, as evidence of his fealty to the national bank.11 Other Whigs were not so sanguine. John Quincy Adams sourly averred on April 4: “Tyler is a political sectarian, of the slave-driving, Virginian, Jeffersonian school, . . . with talents not above mediocrity. . . . This day was in every sense gloomy—rain the whole day.” Demonstrating a penchant for constitutional literalism that would be the envy of a strict constructionist, Adams argued that Tyler should be cumbersomely styled the “Vice-President Acting as President.” Henry Clay hoped Tyler would not resist the Whig agenda, especially a new Bank of the United States, and he wondered about Tyler’s fidelity to the cause as he (Clay) defined it. The doubts and fears raised by Clay, Adams, and other large and small figures in the Whig constellation indicate that the Whigs were aware of the policy differences within the party and of Tyler’s opposition to a bank.12 Harrison’s cabinet was comprised of solid Whigs firmly committed to virtually the entire nationalist agenda. The secretary of state was Daniel Webster of the stern visage: high forehead, dark thick eyebrows, and piercing stare. He was arch-Federalism personified to states’ rights men who remembered, among other misdeeds, his debate with Sen. Robert Y. Hayne eleven years previous. Questions about his personal integrity also clung to him like a black cloud. Secretary of War John Bell was a stout Tennessee lawyer and a veteran of political warfare with Andrew Jackson and his allies like James K. Polk. He was a states’ rights man who had gradually come to support the nationalist Whig agenda, aided in that transition by a fortunate second marriage to a wealthy widow. Attorney General John J. Crittenden of Kentucky was Clay’s closest confidant in the cabinet and was destined to succeed his friend in the Senate. Treasury Secretary Thomas Ewing was formerly a Whig senator from Ohio, a man of large

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physical size and decided convictions. While in Congress, Ewing had supported the Bank of the United States and a protective tariff. He would soon be torn by conflicting allegiances to his political party and to the president. George Badger of North Carolina was the navy secretary, had been raised a Federalist, and was wedded to the nationalist agenda. Postmaster General Francis Granger had ridden the anti-Masonic movement in New York to a successful political career and now to a cabinet post. He was an ally of “The Dictator,” Thurlow Weed, and of New York governor William Seward, and he was an enemy of Henry Clay. During a stint in the House of Representatives, Granger had worked with John Quincy Adams in the fight to repeal the “gag rule.” As a whole, the cabinet was more inclined to Henry Clay’s conception of government and society than John Tyler’s.13 Democrats were hopeful that Tyler’s differences with the Whig nationalists would divide the party and confound its legislative agenda. John Forsyth, a Democrat and former secretary of state, thought the course of the government likely to change under Tyler and that Virginia, a states’ rights bastion, would dominate the government. The New York Herald, displaying a gift for prophesy, wrote that Tyler’s ascension might disrupt the Whig party. If cooperation dissolved between the president, his cabinet, and Congress, then Whig legislation would fail and the Whig party disintegrate. The Richmond Enquirer asserted that Tyler lacked the “moral force” of Harrison, implying that the new president would have less power to influence events than the deceased military hero. The Enquirer also touched on the inherent problem facing Tyler and the Whig party. Would Tyler back Whig legislation or would he adhere to Virginia’s republican principles?14 Tyler struggled with the sudden and dramatic change in his status, from nonentity to new national leader. In a revealing letter to his old political foe, Virginia Democratic senator William C. Rives, Tyler expressed feelings of inadequacy for the job that Providence had bestowed upon him. He ruefully noted that while a great experiment was occurring, the first presidential transition due to death, an enormous and important public-policy debate was in the offing. His assumption of the presidency under such circumstances was an “embarrassment.” Tyler told Rives his actions would be governed as always by republicanism, by the teachings of Jefferson and Madison.15 Tyler knew trouble might be ahead. He was a man of fixed republican convictions. Jubilant over their capture of every elective branch of the federal government, the Whig party was ready to bulldoze into law a predominantly nationalist program. Tyler had opposed the major tenets of the program for much of his career: the tariff, federal internal improvements, and the national bank. Worse still was the novelty of the

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Virginian’s assumption of power, which limited his influence, at least initially. Henry Clay and others suggested Tyler’s presidency would be similar to a regency, a weak caretaker dominated by Congress, placidly waiting for the next elected president. Whig newspapers argued that Tyler must carry out Harrison’s legacy. The new president was aware of the combustive situation in the nation’s capital.16 Harrison had been goaded by Henry Clay into calling a special, or extra, session of Congress. Clay argued the extra session was necessary for several reasons. Without it, Van Buren’s policies would continue until Congress’s regularly scheduled meeting in December. The government faced a revenue deficit brought on by the fall of tariff rates mandated by the Compromise Act of 1833 and by an ongoing economic slowdown. Clay argued that the American people wanted change, that a delay of twelve to eighteen months was unconscionable, that something had to be done about the mounting deficit, and that Whigs were only acting as the Democrats had done in 1837, when Van Buren called his own special session.17 The country was in the midst of a prolonged economic collapse that began in 1837. Wages were low, unemployment was high, many banks had suspended specie payments, and businesses had failed by the score. The depression had destroyed Martin Van Buren’s hopes of a second term as Whigs draped responsibility for the economic shambles on his shoulders. The outcry for relief was one impetus behind the special session. Whigs believed a program of positive legislation embracing their long-held goals—a national bank and a protective tariff—would restore economic vitality.18 The former Second Bank of the United States was in its death throes that spring. Plagued by the financial chicanery of its management and the general economic downturn, the bank, now called the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania, hurtled toward insolvency. That spring the New York Herald was filled with lurid accounts of the bank’s corruption. The sordid revelations of fraud provided an unwelcome backdrop as probank Whigs prepared to charter a third national bank.19 The extra session was Clay’s pet project. He advocated its necessity and lobbied hard to make it a reality. Clay was insistent that Harrison’s promises be honored, and in Clay’s mind those “promises” included longdeferred Whig legislation. As early as March, 1841 (and hinted at earlier), the Kentuckian outlined a legislative plan for the special session: a new Bank of the United States, repeal of the subtreasury, new duties on free articles, and a land bill. He had “a perfect Bank” in mind, modeled on the now-defunct Second Bank of the United States, and planned to control and dominate the congressional session.20 Clay turned sixty-four in 1841, and he was probably still smarting

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from the rebuke received at the hands of his own party a year and four months prior to Harrison’s death, when the Whig party had chosen another champion for president. Afterward, Clay clung to the reins of Whig leadership. Always the paramount figure in the party and the Congress, he battled Harrison and Webster for control of the new administration, winning some battles and losing others. He refused to intervene in minor patronage matters, but he fought hard against a Webster man for the important collectorship of New York, losing in the end. He pushed Harrison to call a special session, something the old man was reluctant to do for a variety of reasons. After dithering, Harrison caved and called for the session, but Clay’s impertinence in forcing a decision prompted Harrison to upbraid him and strained their relationship. Clay and Harrison were therefore estranged when “Tippecanoe” died. The loss of key patronage posts to Webster’s cronies, not to mention having lost the presidential nomination at a time when Whig chances had never been better, grated on Clay. He berated Senate colleagues as the Twenty-sixth Congress closed, in one instance coming perilously close to a duel with Alabama senator William R. King. The dynamic Kentuckian was in no mood for compromise.21 Three days after Tyler became president, he issued an inaugural address to introduce himself to the American people and to claim the presidential mantle. It seemed odd for such an address to follow a death, as typically inaugural speeches were associated with cheers and crowds after a hard-fought election. But in this singular situation, settling authority was crucial. The address revealed Tyler’s continuing affinity for the republicanism that was the hallmark of his life and career. He had warned again and again of the dangers the executive posed and had insisted on strict limits to presidential powers, beliefs that prompted his break with the Jackson administration. Harkening back to those battles, the paper amounted to a republican critique of the Jackson and Van Buren administrations. Tyler spoke of “the tendency of all human institutions . . . to concentrate power in the hands of a single man,” a tendency that led to “their ultimate downfall.” This was a cardinal republican tenet derived from assumptions on the easy corruptibility of human nature, simple to manipulate by an evil king or president, and the inevitability of societal decay. Drawing on his interpretation of the Removal crisis of 1833–34, he recommended the complete and total separation of the purse and sword—that is, a Treasury with a greater degree of freedom from the president’s control. Patronage, that ancient republican bugbear, was the key. If the president controlled the disposition of Treasury funds, he controlled the retainers who were entrusted with administering the funds. Couple that with the growing number of government posts in general

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and with an unrestricted power to remove as he pleased, and a “selfishly ambitious” president could “perpetuate his authority” or name his successor. The removal power created a “crouching servility” among the government staff, who would meddle in state and federal elections at the president’s behest. Even state legislation would be subject to the federal president’s whim. Since states constituted the guardians of liberty in the federated system, their subversion spelled the beginning of tyranny. Tyler promised to direct congressional attention to the patronage and its attendant problems, and he expressed a willingness to approve any measures Congress thought would remedy the evils. As for his own appointments, he promised to dismiss only active partisans and pledged that his own appointees would stay out of politics. (It should be noted that he failed to keep this promise.) As to the financial system, Tyler expressed disapproval of the current structure, by which he meant Van Buren’s subtreasury. He vowed to approve “any constitutional measure,” a significant qualifier, that Congress passed to stabilize the currency. And how would he determine if the legislation was constitutional? Tyler wrote, “In deciding upon the adaptation of any such measure to the end proposed, as well as its conformity to the Constitution, I shall resort to the fathers of the great republican school for advice and instruction.” This vague allusion was optimistically interpreted by many Whigs and Whig newspapers as an indication Tyler would emulate James Madison, who had signed a bank bill. Tyler’s confusing Henrico letter contributed to Whig optimism, and his constitutional qualifier was ignored.22 In his final paragraph, Tyler warned of the dangers of creeping latitudinarianism in constitutional interpretation and of the importance of upholding the careful balance between government branches as crafted by the virtuous Founders. He thus reaffirmed the republican obsession with maintaining compacts—loose interpretations of clauses were a form of decay ultimately destructive of themselves and of liberty. Specifically, he stated that those who administered the government “should carefully abstain from all attempts to enlarge the range of powers thus granted to the several departments of the Government other than by an appeal to the people for additional grants, lest by so doing they disturb that balance which the patriots and statesmen who framed the Constitution designed to establish between the Federal Government and the states composing the Union.” If these sacred rules were ignored, then factions would arise, bent upon gratifying “their selfish ends,” which would in turn spawn sectional troubles. The Union might break apart or a centralized despotism might seize power, “a bloody scepter and an iron crown.”23 The inaugural is remarkable both for what was said and what was left unsaid. Tyler continued to be a consistent devotee of republicanism. He

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seemed determined, paradoxically, to employ the executive branch to reduce the powers of the executive branch. His affirmation of a republicanism informed by the lessons and attitudes of the eighteenth century is singular. But just as significant was what he did not affirm. Harrison had promised to serve a single term. Tyler made no such pledge; he did not rule out another term. Whether consciously considered or not, this was a shot across the bow to those who thirsted after the presidency, men like the powerful Henry Clay. By failing to renounce a second term, Tyler encouraged the factionalism he feared.24 In addition, Tyler denounced the subtreasury without specifying what type of institution he wished to see replace it. He neither repudiated a national bank nor endorsed one. He must have known that Henry Clay and other Whigs would shortly repeal the subtreasury and push for a national bank. But Tyler did not commit himself; it would have been bold indeed to announce opposition to a principal legislative goal of his own political party three days after the death of its first elected president. But his qualifiers were not strong enough to signal the strength of his antibank convictions. They could be and were taken as an endorsement of James Madison’s views on the bank; though Madison thought a national bank was unconstitutional, he had signed a bank charter. Perhaps Tyler, affected by his service with Webster on the Senate Finance Committee, was inching his way to a Madisonian compromise or at least fostering, perhaps unintentionally, ambiguity about his views. He allowed himself room for all options.25 During the first year of his presidency, a coterie of Virginia states’ rights zealots lobbied Tyler to remain consistent, to cling to the republican beliefs he expressed and cherished throughout his career. This group included but was not limited to William and Mary professors Nathaniel Beverley Tucker and Thomas Dew, Tucker’s friend Judge Abel Upshur, Congressmen Henry Wise and Thomas Gilmer, and Sen. William C. Rives. Others of similar convictions also pressed Tyler to remain true to his principles. Beverley Tucker was the half-brother of the mercurial John Randolph. Like Tyler’s father, Tucker’s father, St. George Tucker, was an Antifederalist. Both Tyler and Tucker had attended William and Mary, and both had an emotional attachment to the school. Beverley Tucker had come to believe that the proper remedy for southern grievances was not nullification, but secession. He spent years teaching law students a romantic vision of a Virginia renaissance that had as essential elements states’ rights ideals and possible separation from the North. To Tucker the North was a cold region of grasping people bent on subverting the limits of the Constitution for profit to the detriment of the South.26 Republican ideology gave anxious southerners a framework through

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which they interpreted northern actions in the worst possible light. Tucker and states’ rights men believed the national bank was another dangerous agency aggravating the slide to centralization. A national financial institution ruled by northern capital would serve northern interests at the expense of the South. Southerners resented the unfavorable discount rates New York banks gave their notes, as had the Second Bank of the United States when it existed. These discounts may have reflected true free-market valuation, but to southerners they symbolized unjustified sectional favoritism. If the tendency to centralization, the natural propensity of the federal government to increase its powers at the expense of the states, a fundamental republican concern, was permitted to continue, then the states would inevitably be stripped of their powers. When this happened, southerners envisioned an apocalypse: the installation of a tyrannical majority and/or an executive that would dictate policy to the South. Slavery would be abolished. Without the supervision so necessary to their well being, former slaves would be ripe for demagogues and desperate acts.27 The Richmond Enquirer reinforced that anti-national bank message and raised the stakes for Tyler. The Enquirer wrote that if the president listened to “treacherous counsels” and “treacherous blandishments” and approved “the odious and dangerous schemes” of the Federalists, then he would lose his “high reputation.” Tyler, the Enquirer believed, could expect nothing from the Whig party. Its abolitionist faction would not embrace a slaveholder and its anti-Mason faction would not tolerate a “highminded Virginian.” His sole hope was to join the states’ righters, who would stand with him if he stood on principle. But they would “indignantly frown upon the slightest deviation from the path of honor and rectitude.” The New York Herald began promoting a Tyler-led third party as a method of placing politics on an elevated moral plane. Like the Enquirer, the Herald opposed the bank as an engine of corruption run for the benefit of stock speculators. The Herald wanted Tyler to lead a crusade that rejected the spoils-seeking Democrats and the commercially avaricious Whigs. It argued that the president could win a second term by breaking with the Whigs and forming his own party. The Herald’s vigorous thirdparty refrain continued throughout the forthcoming extra session of Congress.28 Honor, rectitude, high reputation, and indignant frowns, these were code words in the nineteenth-century South that set off warning bells for any respectable southern gentleman, certainly so for a tidewater aristocrat like John Tyler. Concern with personal honor is often overlooked as a motivating factor in Tyler’s actions. Throughout his career, Tyler had adhered to republicanism with rigid consistency. He had sacrificed a Senate seat out of devotion to constancy. Historian Edward Ayers describes the

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nineteenth-century southern honor code as “a system of values within which you have exactly as much worth as others confer upon you.” Honor and public opinion were identical. When the Richmond Enquirer suggested that Tyler’s approval of a bank after a lifetime of opposition threatened his honor, it was a very serious matter. If Tyler abandoned consistency, Virginians would cease to respect him, and with that loss of respect would go Tyler’s personal honor. For a southern gentleman of aristocratic parentage, such a loss was unthinkable. Ayers points out that politics was a high stakes game for the southerner, who could be highly respected or wholly loathed. That Tyler was imbued with the honor system is certain. He was ever the polite gentleman, and contemporaries often remarked on his devotion to courtesy and good manners. Formality and ritualized manners were typical of those observing the honor code.29 At the end of April, Tyler wrote to Beverley Tucker. He complained of isolation from the Virginia friends and colleagues whose advice he relied upon. He told Tucker that everything was going fine except for one not-so-small matter: the bank issue. On that, Whigs were reluctant to compromise, which annoyed Tyler. He informed Tucker that he favored creating a central board to oversee state banks. The new president feared that the recent revelations of financial malfeasance at the former Second Bank of the United States plus suspension of specie payments by many state banks had created new, and exacerbated old, prejudices against a central bank. And since he had no time to come up with any proposal, Tyler decided to rely on Congress to submit a plan, reserving the right to judge its constitutionality and veto it if necessary.30 Five days later, on April 30, the president responded to a letter Henry Clay had written him two weeks previous. Tyler signaled, in a diplomatic manner, his objections to portions of the Whig agenda, particularly the bank, to which he had practical and constitutional objections. He laid out his thoughts “in a spirit of frankness.” Tyler envisioned a much more limited agenda of legislative action for the forthcoming session. He favored repealing the subtreasury, enacting Treasury relief, and improving military defenses, particularly coastal fortifications. The session would be a success if these items were passed, and Tyler boldly claimed that Harrison’s extra-session proclamation called for dealing solely with these issues.31 After briefly touching on the distribution of land sales, Tyler argued for postponing the bank issue. “I would not have it urg[e]d prematurely,” wrote the new president. He reminded Clay that public opinion was agitated, mistrustful, and not prepared for another bank, especially after the recent revelations of corruption by the former national bank in Philadelphia. Tyler predicted that this bad publicity would be used effectively by the opposition. Democrats were already publicly promising to work for repeal immediately upon passage of any new charter. Such fierce

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opposition might retard deposits. Tyler wondered what businessman could feel confidence in an institution under vigorous assault? If Clay went forward despite these drawbacks, the president requested that the new bank be fashioned in a constitutional manner. How this was to be done he did not specify, leaving the details to Congress. He kept his options open while avoiding the use of the word “veto,” a term he felt comfortable using with Beverley Tucker but not with Henry Clay.32 Perhaps Tyler should have been blunter with Clay and plainly stated that a bank in an unconstitutional form would be vetoed. But Tyler was unclear in his own mind about an acceptable form, although he knew what he did not like—something akin to Biddle’s bank. The April letters to Tucker and Clay indicate that, whatever election year waffling he may have committed in 1840, Tyler was returning to fundamental republican principles. He had warned Clay that a bank had to pass his constitutionality test.33 While privately confiding to friends like Beverley Tucker that he did not want a new national bank, publicly and to powerful Whigs like Henry Clay, Tyler was less explicit. He put forth caveats to a new charter but did not frankly threaten a veto. Instead, after detailing his concerns, Tyler threw the bank question to Congress, merely requesting that Clay avoid constitutional objections for the sake of party unity. He never flatly ruled out a national bank. This was construed as a Madisonian approach to the bank—that is, the bank might not fit into the exact letter of the Constitution, but since it was good for the country, it could be approved. Tyler was sending conflicting signals, leaving the door open to a possible compromise but not describing what that could be. Meanwhile, his republican beliefs, his desire for consistency, a matter vital to the maintenance of his personal honor, profoundly weighed on him.34 Tyler was probably engaged in his own internal debate. What to do? To approve a bank would please many Whigs but alienate Virginia and ruin Tyler’s reputation and personal honor, for he would be dubbed a hypocrite. The Henrico letter created some expectation of presidential approval. While the internal debate raged, men like Tucker and Wise worked to reinforce Tyler’s natural proclivity to follow the republican route. Clay and others grappled with this confusing message. It was reinforced in a letter Clay received in early May from the treasury secretary, Thomas Ewing, who was destined to be placed in a most awkward position in the coming months. Ewing wrote Clay: “The President cannot without manifest inconsistency recommend a Bank in his Message—He would wish if possible to avoid the question at the special session. That, as a matter of course, I presume Congress will not permit—and when the question shall be presented to him, sanctioned by the representatives of the States & the people, I have no doubt that he will acquiesce in what they may

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will.” Attorney General Crittenden also told Clay that the president would sign a bank bill. Tyler may have been searching for a rationale that would allow him to approve such a bill without forfeiting his honor. That honor was a primary concern is apparent in Ewing’s letter. Tyler could not urge a plan himself—he would be labeled a political hypocrite—and he wished to dodge the bank if possible. But Tyler was waffling. Recognizing the difficult position he was in, he held out the hope for cooperation. Or perhaps Tyler’s exquisite manners led to some confusion about the extent of his willingness to sanction a bank in the minds of cabinet members and Whig congressmen.35 The extra session of the Twenty-seventh Congress convened on May 31, 1841. The official Whig newspaper in Washington, the National Intelligencer, predicted Congress would take up distribution, increased duties, subtreasury repeal, a new fiscal agent, and a temporary loan for the hard-pressed Treasury. Anticipating objections to a national bank, the Intelligencer urged opponents to come up with a palatable alternative that provided the same benefits. The very term “bank” evoked so much dislike that Whigs labeled their new bank a “fiscal agent.” Prospects were grim indeed if the bank had to hide under a nom de plume.36 A Clay ally, John White of Kentucky, was elected Speaker of the House, evidence of the senator’s tremendous influence over congressional Whigs. One congressman, however, had no intention of following anything but his own course. Former president John Quincy Adams, seventyfour years old, had been engaged in a heretofore quixotic crusade to repeal the “gag rule,” a House rule that prohibited the reception of petitions advocating the abolition of slavery. Adams believed that the gag rule was unconstitutional since it denied a fundamental right—petitioning the government for redress of grievances. As the House opened, Adams began again, hopeful that this House, the first with a forty-vote Whig majority, would rescind the gag rule.37 For over two weeks the House debated the rule; it became a very bitter sectional wrangle. Adams described the restriction as “a measure of the South against the North,” for petitions from the North were routinely dismissed, while those from the South were routinely accepted. The response from southern members was bitter and a frightening harbinger of future bloodshed. Congressman Kenneth Rayner of North Carolina borrowed the imagery and style of Walter Scott’s novels and promised resistance by cavaliers and humble mountain folk until the North walked on a sea of graves. A New York correspondent for the National Intelligencer wrote that the public no longer read minutes of House debates; citizens were disgusted by a House that had “metamorphosed into a bear-garden.” The New York Herald’s Washington correspondent wrote: “Mr. Adams does more mischief than any other ten men.” Henry Wise became a leader in

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the fight to retain the restriction. He was a confidant of Tyler throughout the session and invoked the president in support of rejecting abolition petitions. Wise said, “Indeed, I know that no man is more opposed to the introduction of this disturbing topic here than the present Chief Magistrate.” Wise argued that the Whigs would be hypocrites if they repealed the rule after an election campaign that was not sympathetic to abolitionism. Notwithstanding such rhetoric, the House repealed the gag rule in a dramatic turnabout by refusing to accept the rules of the previous session. But Adams’s victory was short-lived. Parliamentary trickery aided by the Whigs’ desire to accomplish something with their new majority doomed the repeal, and eventually the gag rule was reinstated.38 The House was in disarray for seventeen days, the sectional tone of the debate jarring. The success of the antigag vote, while temporary, highlighted the vulnerability of southern institutions in a majoritarian system increasingly dominated by the North and its ever expanding population. A strong national government was a threat to the South, and a national bank was a centralizing force, an element of the nationalization that southerners so feared. The gag-rule controversy was a gloomy portent of things to come and got the new session off to a contentious and inauspicious beginning. It also may have further stimulated Tyler’s republican hyperconcern with centralization. Tyler dispatched a message to the special session on June 1, 1841. The president touched on a variety of topics common to such communications but focused particularly on the bank. His republican convictions dominated the message. Tyler again reaffirmed his belief in an expansive destiny for the United States, growing in territory to preserve the agrarian idyll. He spoke of an American Empire and assured congressmen that the “federative system . . . admits in safety of the greatest expansion.” At all times, he maintained, the federal government had to be restrained lest it poach on state powers and wreck the delicate balance created by the Founding Fathers. In an extraordinary blow at what he perceived as past abuses of patronage, Tyler called on the Senate to vigorously inspect his nominees for fitness and promised to submit proposals to limit executive appointments. He asked Congress to sustain a strong militia, on which he was confident American security could rest. He restated his support for the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which he had helped broker, despite the government’s drastic revenue shortfall. In summary, his republican affirmations included a preference for militia over a professional army, a revenue tariff, restricting the reach of the federal government, expansion in space, greater congressional involvement in patronage, and limiting the president’s appointment power. He also endorsed distribution of land-sales revenue to the states—many of which were in difficult financial straits—as a method of ensuring the liberty-preserving balance between

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states and the federal government. Tyler preferred distribution to the federal assumption of state debts, which he felt was unconstitutional.39 The president devoted a considerable portion of the message to the bank question. He noted that in the past eight years three fiscal agencies had been tried and each had in turn been rejected by the “popular voice.” Andrew Jackson defeated the Bank of the United States, and the people sustained him. Placing government deposits in state banks led to reckless lending that caused the ongoing depression, so that system was also defunct. The subtreasury had been condemned in the election of 1840. What the American people preferred now was a mystery. But Tyler knew what he did not like: a fiscal agency that was controlled either by the government or by private individuals. His republican temperament told him both were too vulnerable to corruption. “Objects of political aggrandizement may seduce the first, and the promptings of a boundless cupidity may assail the last.” The president seemed to be hinting that a fiscal agency separate from both the government and the financial community should be established, although he made no specific suggestion or explained precisely how this should be accomplished. Instead he threw the matter to Congress. Since public opinion in 1840 had rejected the subtreasury but endorsed, in Tyler’s opinion, nothing else, the best way to ascertain the “public voice” was to refer the matter to the people’s representatives. Tyler reserved the right not to approve any measure that was unconstitutional or that harmed prosperity, a rather broad veto range that embraced both constitutionality and expediency. But the word “veto” was not in the message, and Tyler said he could not imagine rebuffing any congressional act on the subject. “With the adoption of a financial agency of a satisfactory character the hope may be indulged that the country may once more return to a state of prosperity.” He closed his discussion of the bank issue on that optimistic note.40 Tyler’s message warned against a bank but did not rule out the possibility of presidential approval. His position was evolving, and confusion reigned as to what he meant. The Richmond Enquirer said the message “leaves us all in a fog.” Throughout the spring, the Enquirer had editorially stated that personal honor and consistency demanded that Tyler not approve a national bank. To those charged words, the Enquirer now added the ghost of Tyler’s father, a contemporary of Revolutionary heroes. “If Mr. Tyler had the stern stuff and the noble pride of his illustrious father, he would not be ruled even by Mr. Clay.” Was Tyler, asked the Enquirer, a “highminded Virginian,” a “Roman” who would resist a rising tide of consolidation? If Tyler signed a bank bill, he was a lackey of Henry Clay, a political apostate who abandoned the sacred principles of a revered father. This was a potent and nasty mix of the personal and political.41 Soon after Tyler’s message, each cabinet department submitted re-

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ports to Congress on its circumstances and the need for any legislative remedy. Remarkably, Treasury Secretary Ewing’s report was a strong endorsement of a national bank. Ewing thought the lifetime of the previous U.S. Bank a golden age. “The period embracing the last ten years of the existence of the late Bank of the United States as the fiscal agent, is fresh in the memory of us all, and is looked back to as a period of great public prosperity.” A new bank would help the country out of the depression: “The business of the country would, however, in the opinion of the undersigned, steadily and certainly revive under its influence.” Ewing said a national bank was constitutional but noted that “many wise and patriotic statesmen” felt otherwise; he was probably referring to the president. Given the concerns of these men, the secretary recommended a financial institution that allayed these fears and harmonized differences. The report reflected Ewing’s views more than those of the man he served. He favored a national bank. That Tyler allowed him to write such a probank endorsement signals either his own confusion and continuing internal debate or represented a republican hands-off attitude relative to Treasury reports. The statement was viewed as the administration’s position, softened the effect of the antibank rhetoric in Tyler’s message, and led many to believe the president would accept some type of national bank.42 Four days later, on June 7, Clay stood in the Senate and laid out an agenda for the session. He proposed that the Senate focus only on the issues that prompted the extra session. Clay also submitted a resolution calling on Ewing to submit a plan for a bank that best served the public welfare. The House, acting in concert with Clay, passed a resolution the same day setting up a select committee to investigate the currency and a new fiscal agent. With the introduction of Clay’s request of the treasury secretary, an interesting byplay developed between the Kentuckian and Virginia senator William C. Rives. Senator Rives asked Clay to modify the resolution so that a fiscal agent was called for instead of a bank, a euphemism the New York Herald called “the dainty phrase for a national bank.” Rives also wanted the resolution to include wording that instructed the secretary to report an agent that was free of constitutional objections. Clay accepted the changes with one caveat: the resolution had to call for a bank or fiscal agent. That was acceptable to Rives, and the amended resolution passed.43 Ewing set to work and came up with a bank plan. His fiscal agent reflected the influence of John Tyler, who evidently shook off whatever torpor or excessive concern for the Treasury’s independence that had compelled him to allow Ewing to write a probank report. The oldfashioned national bank that report so lavishly praised did not survive. Instead, a plan for a much more limited institution was submitted to Congress on June 12, 1841. The Ewing bank was incorporated in the District

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of Columbia to placate strict constructionists, who objected to Congress incorporating a national financial entity but accepted its right to legislate for the District. Capital was to be thirty million dollars, far less than many Whigs thought adequate. Most significantly, the charter required a state’s approval before establishing a branch therein. This provision, so much a reflection of Tyler’s extreme devotion to constitutional literalism, became a sticking point. Overall, as one historian has noted, the Ewing plan contained concessions to mollify everyone but satisfied no one.44 Significantly, the National Intelligencer said the Ewing plan was not a cabinet measure. This implied that the plan bore Tyler’s imprimatur and that the president and the cabinet, or at least some portion of the cabinet, differed on the bank plan. The Intelligencer disliked parts of the charter, specifically locating the bank in Washington, D.C., rather than a major commercial center such as Philadelphia or New York City and the requirement of state assent for branching. Despite the flaws, the Intelligencer gave the plan a qualified endorsement. The reasons were obvious. A protracted debate, especially over constitutional interpretation, was likely to wreck Whig unity, and the country was desperate for economic relief. The Intelligencer reported that 75 percent of banks were in suspension and the value of bank paper had precipitously declined. Better, the Intelligencer concluded, to accept the Ewing design and avert trouble for the good of the country and the Whig party.45 Earlier in the month, the Senate under Clay’s leadership had formed the Select Committee on the Currency and had given it two tasks: draft a new bank charter and stabilize the currency. Clay chaired the committee and stacked it with probank senators. Ewing’s plan was referred to the committee. Clay faced a choice: he could either accept the Tyler-Ewing plan, queer features and all, which had the virtue of the president’s sanction or report out his own preference, a national bank in every sense modeled on the previous bank, and thereby run the risk of executive disapproval. Clay chose the latter course. On June 21, 1841, Clay presented the committee report, which called for a bank named the Fiscal Bank of the United States. In a speech accompanying the presentation, Clay dismissed Ewing’s plan and specifically refuted objections Tyler raised in his message at the beginning of the month. Clay agreed with Ewing’s June 2 Treasury report, which had endorsed a stronger bank than the eventual administration plan. He dismissed the constitutionality issue as long since decided. Expediency too was not worth considering. Clay’s bank was located in Washington, a sop to strict constructionists, but on the crucial issue of requiring state assent for branches, Clay was unyielding. He argued that if the Congress permitted states to reject branches, the national assembly would have surrendered an important power, one that precedent

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placed firmly in Congress’s possession. Further, Clay believed that, if given the power, states would reject branches, and that would defeat the purpose of the bank; without nationwide branches, the bank would be unable to establish beneficial currency regulation throughout the polity, leaving the country plagued by weak paper. The Tyler bank would be another in a long line of “disastrous experiments.” Clay could not surrender the constitutional ground that forty years of bank practice and Supreme Court decisions had entrenched. If he did, the whole interminable constitutional debate would be reopened anew, a maddening prospect.46 Clay laid down the gauntlet for Tyler. He refused to accept the constitutional “protection,” that salve to Tyler’s republican sensibilities, that the president had grafted onto the bank charter. For this and for his imperious handling of the Senate, Clay has been labeled a “dictator” by generations of historians. Yet while it is true that Clay had a tendency to be brisk and impolitic as he tried to move the session along, the label “dictator” does not wear well for a number of reasons. Whig dogma held that Congress ought to play the lead role in the enactment of legislation. The president could not “dictate” or try to control the body. He was supposed to sit in the White House, Zeus-like, passing on legislation as it was delivered. A presidential veto was only appropriate in very rare circumstances; some Whigs even called for abolishing it. Whigs then were part of the republican tradition in the United States that regarded the executive branch as the most potent threat to liberty. The executive was curbed, hemmed in, and limited in its powers; indeed, the first state governments formed after independence strictly limited the power of their governors—Pennsylvania initially had no governor at all. Andrew Jackson’s aggressive assertion of executive prerogatives was a dramatic departure from this tradition, and it was this more than anything else that had led republicans to join with nationalists to form the Whig party. Precedent also favored Clay’s bank. A national bank had been in existence more or less for forty years. Jefferson allowed it to exist, and Madison, the revered Father of the Constitution, signed a charter bringing a new bank into being. John Marshall decided in favor of its constitutionality, and neither of the previous two charters had any state restriction on branches. The issue had long been decided. Must, Clay asked, we plow this same ground while the country suffered? Tyler had hotly opposed presidential “usurpation,” and Jackson’s actions had prompted him to abandon the Democratic party. He had always viewed the executive as the primary threat to American liberty. He was also a good friend of Henry Clay, whom he admired. The two had worked together in 1833 to successfully defuse the Nullification Crisis, and Tyler supported Clay for president in 1840. Their long friendship and

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association made it only natural for Clay to expect more cooperation than confrontation from Tyler. The Whigs had been out of power for years, and they had just won a tremendous victory in 1840, capturing the entire government, including a hefty majority in the House. Compromising on long settled constitutional doctrine after a lengthy exile and a victorious campaign was asking a bit much. Clay was encouraged in his course by Tyler’s equivocations. The president had, in his message and inaugural, faintly criticized a national bank but then passed it to Congress, leaving to them, as the body closest to the people, the task of constructing a fiscal agent. This stance, in keeping with Whig dogma, implied that Tyler might approve whatever Congress sent to the White House. Many states’ righters thought Tyler’s antibank rhetoric masked a desire to sign a bill; they believed his rhetoric provided a veneer of consistency behind which he would wiggle into approving a new bank charter. That Tyler chose the wrong course is clear from action subsequently taken on the tariff. The president flatly ruled out any duty increase that violated the Act of 1833, that is, no duty could be above the 20 percent mandated by that legislation. Clay and others wanted higher duties, but Tyler’s firmness enervated tariff foes, and efforts to raise duties above 20 percent failed. The president should have bluntly and clearly proclaimed his opposition to a national bank, proposing instead a central board overseeing state banks as he preferred, a variation of which he subsequently introduced in the regular congressional session the following winter. This would have provoked howls of outrage from nationalist Whigs but might have prevented the greater catastrophe toward which ambiguity was leading him. Given these facts, it was hardly unreasonable, much less “dictation,” for Clay to move forward with a traditional bank. It may have been bad politics since the subsequent disagreement disrupted the Whig party. But it was not a gambit to provoke a break with Tyler for purposes of ostracizing him from the Whigs and thereby eliminating him from the presidential succession. While the presidency was never far from Clay’s mind, in this instance he strongly felt that the prostration of the economy would be immeasurably relieved by a national bank. This motivated Clay’s course rather than some fevered conspiratorial design to whisk the rug out from under John Tyler. As June came to a close, trouble between Clay and Tyler threatened. With Clay pressing forward, the Washington correspondent of the New York Herald reported that Tyler intended to stand up for the Constitution, words that implied compromise was unlikely. The Herald man said Clay had to capitulate, and that was problematic. Barring such, Tyler would veto the bank bill as constituted. The Herald editorially encouraged a Tyler

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veto, which “will at once break down both the great parties, whig and locofoco—reorganize the masses anew—produce an extraordinary excitement throughout the country, and probably carry John Tyler into the next Presidency, by an overwhelming force.” The Richmond Enquirer continued needling Tyler’s personal honor, using loaded terms like “degrade,” “stoop,” “cower,” “quail,” and “dictation,” to describe the Tyler-Clay relationship. Clay’s gamble increasingly appeared a poor one.47 Clay suspected as much. “You will have seen that I have made a Bank report,” Clay wrote Peter Porter on June 30, “presenting a scheme essentially variant from Mr. Ewing’s plan. Its fate is however uncertain in Congress, and at the White House. We have difficulties from this latter quarter, which I hope may be surmounted, but which may be fatal.” Clay’s anxieties soon proved well founded.48 With Senate consideration of the Clay bank underway, on July 1, Virginia senator William C. Rives rose and moved an amendment to substitute Ewing’s language requiring state approval of branches for Clay’s clause that exempted such a stipulation. Rives was a conservative who supported state banks and opposed a national bank. Once political foes, Rives and Tyler had been drawn together that spring, perhaps because they were Virginians and shared certain common beliefs. Rives wrote his wife at the end of the month that he could not leave Washington because a heavy responsibility devolved upon him. He was the president’s spokesman in the Senate.49 With that understood, Rives speech is particularly interesting as a possible reflection of Tyler’s thoughts. The senator endorsed state banks or some more limited agency as the preferable alternative to a new national bank. The American people felt an “invincible repugnance” to the bank because it was based on an unwarranted grant of power that excited “republican jealousy” and it violated state sovereignty. Rives maintained that the bank’s constitutionality was not a settled fact, and he compared the assumption of power that created it to British tax policies that fueled the American Revolution. He argued that the election of 1840 was no mandate for a bank, that Harrison would have opposed it, and that Tyler’s record indicated that he too opposed it. Rives concluded with a plea for a more limited agency that handled government funds efficiently and strengthened the currency. And such was possible if the Whigs only showed as much magnanimity to their republican-minded countrymen as they did to foreigners during negotiations on the national boundaries. Any institution that was allowed more leeway would fuel speculation and stock manipulation.50 Clay rose to answer Rives. His response reflected the intense pent-up frustration of prolonged exile from political power. The Whigs were bursting to enact their long deferred and defeated agenda. Now Rives had

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aimed a rhetorical salvo at the weak link in the Whig coalition—republican and states’ rights southerners. Clay characterized Rives’s proposal as another experiment, and the American people had just endured eight years of experiments. He claimed the people wanted an “old-fashioned” bank and declared that Congress was either authorized by the Constitution to create a national bank or not. If authorized, there was no need for another authority’s approval, that of a state legislature. If not authorized, then the bank should not be created. Clay said that to establish a bank in the District of Columbia with no power to branch, only launched a purely local bank, “a rickety, imbecile, incompetent local bank,” not the national institution that provided financial stability. If the federal government surrendered a power, that would be the end of that power.51 Clay had heard that Tyler would not accept the bank bill without the Rives amendment. He claimed Tyler would never allow some senator to act as his (Tyler’s) mouthpiece on such an issue. The president would not comment officially, Clay argued, implying that as a Whig, Tyler would never dictate to Congress. He ended with an expression of hope; he did not believe the issue would result in a break between the White House and Congress, but if one came he trusted that it would be an amicable difference that would not harm the country. The next day came further confirmation of the Tyler administration’s unhappiness with Clay’s bill. Rufus Choate, Daniel Webster’s acolyte and replacement as Massachusetts’s senator, rose in support of the Rives amendment and bluntly stated that without the amendment, the bank bill was doomed. Choate never mentioned Tyler’s name, but the statement was a direct intimation of a presidential veto if the Rives amendment were not accepted. At this Clay, recognizing the implications, shook with anger. He leapt to his feet and demanded that Choate reveal his source for so definitive an assertion. Choate, taken aback, responded in a manner that revealed Tyler’s opinion even more than his previous statement. Choate said he could not reveal his source, for to do so would be a breach of privilege and violate a parliamentary rule, an obvious reference to President Tyler. Amid Clay’s hectoring of Choate, who denied he spoke for the administration, Sen. William Archer of Virginia rose to denounce the amendment as unpopular with everyone except the president.52 Rives’s amendment was eventually defeated, but he had raised the strict constructionist–republican banner. A protracted debate now ensued as quiescent Democrats, invigorated by the specter of a divided Whig party, roused themselves and peppered the bank bill with amendments, each designed to highlight a particular fault in the legislation. John C. Calhoun vigorously criticized the Whig program, which he characterized as a unified design that undermined states’ rights. He appealed to states’

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rights men who had gone over to the Whigs; how could they support such consolidation?53 As the month wore on and Clay engaged in the legislative trench warfare of beating back unwanted amendments, it became increasingly clear that some form of compromise was necessary if the bank was to survive. Clay’s friends urged him to compromise, and one confidant told him to position himself so that if a break came, he would not be blamed.54 On July 27 Clay stood in the Senate and candidly admitted that the bank bill as constituted would fail by a vote of twenty-five to twenty-six. The sticking point was the state-assent requirement Rives introduced at the beginning of the month. Clay proposed altering the current language on that topic to allow a state to reject a branch, but only for a limited time. A state legislature would be permitted to reject a branch during its first legislative session after passage of the bank bill. Barring a vote at that time, state approval of branching was assumed. The use of time, of delay, emulated the formula Clay and Tyler employed when they helped construct the Compromise Tariff of 1833. Significantly though, Clay’s language went on to affirm the right to establish any office in a state as sanctioned by the Constitution whenever such was “necessary and proper.” The latter portion of the “compromise” was justifiably criticized as destroying the concession. In effect, state legislatures were allowed to reject branches of the national bank, but Congress retained the power to override their objections if they deemed it necessary.55 Bogus compromise or not, Clay’s gambit rounded up enough votes to pass his bank bill. The bill as amended cleared the Senate on July 28 by a twenty-six-to-twenty-three margin. The House passed the bill without alteration on Friday, August 6, 1841. Tyler now had to decide whether Clay’s compromise language went far enough to assuage his republican concerns.56 The newspapers were full of lugubrious predictions of a veto. Washington, reported a New York Herald correspondent, was in a state of “intense excitement” over the bank. The Herald said that Tyler’s entire career foretold a veto, and the paper promised readers that an express train to Baltimore would speed the veto message to its pages.57 Tucker, Wise, Upshur, and others continuously lobbied Tyler for a veto. In addition to writing the president directly, Tucker wrote a series of essays that appeared in the Richmond Enquirer and were designed to buttress Tyler’s resolve to stand for states’ rights. The essays stressed, among other things, Tyler’s independence, that he had pledged himself to nothing save repeal of the subtreasury, and that a bank was unconstitutional. Wise told friends a veto was assured. Upshur also wrote Tyler. It is a measure of Tyler’s independence even from the states’ rights crowd that Upshur doubted the president’s constancy and had no idea what would happen.

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Tyler also received states’ rights cues from the gag-rule fight and from Calhoun’s rhetoric on the consolidation danger presented by Whig legislation. These must have reinforced Tyler’s steadfast affinity for the republican principles that protected the South’s unique way of life.58 A president has ten days to reject a bill or it becomes law. As the deadline approached and Tyler took no action, it became increasingly obvious that he intended to veto the bank. Intimations of a veto appeared in both the Washington Madisonian and the New York Herald. Tyler hoped to postpone the blowup for a time to prevent disrupting congressional passage of legislation he wanted.59 Tyler vetoed the bank bill on August 16, 1841. He did so against the wishes of the entire Harrison cabinet, which unanimously opposed his decision. Tyler did not mince words in the veto message, which was direct, succinct, and forceful. The question of the effect that approving the bank would have on his personal honor emerged immediately as did the fact that the bill was at variance with his republican principles. Tyler reminded the Senate that he had opposed a national bank for twenty-five years, in the state legislature, both houses of Congress, and ambiguity forgotten, during the 1840 campaign. Tyler had, he stated, taken an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution on assuming the presidency. “Entertaining the opinions alluded to and having taken this oath, the Senate and the country will see that I could not give my sanction to a measure of the character described without surrendering all claim to the respect of honorable men, all confidence on the part of the people, all self-respect, all regard for moral and religious obligations, without an observance of which no government can be prosperous and no people can be happy. It would be to commit a crime which I would not willfully commit to gain any earthly reward, and which would justly subject me to the ridicule and scorn of all virtuous men.”60 He painted an apocalyptic vision of a precipitous personal moral fall that the veto prevented. This vision, interestingly, fit neatly into the editorial line that had been advanced all summer by the New York Herald and the Richmond Enquirer. The Herald claimed that the Tyler presidency ushered in a new, more moral, and religious approach to leadership and governing, an ethical regime that would not sanction the crassness and corruption of a national bank. Whether influenced by the Herald or not, Tyler’s conception of his obligations as a gentleman, the necessity of a rigid consistency lest public obloquy befall him with loss of honor, is apparent in the address. The president made clear that he preferred a fiscal agent limited to the efficient handling of government funds and with the power of exchange. He did not believe the bank should be empowered to grant local discounts, a hardening of his position. Tyler reviewed the historical record and concluded that any positive effect on the currency was due to the pre-

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vious national bank’s exchange rather than discount policies. A branch bank discounting locally often undermined state banks; Tyler therefore was in effect protecting state banks by renouncing discounts. Perhaps William C. Rives, a staunch defender of state banks, had inspired this passage. Tyler dismissed Clay’s purported compromise. He implied it was a sham that conceded nothing while giving the appearance of concession. “Far better to say to the States boldly and frankly, Congress wills and submission is demanded.” The subterfuge was, Tyler implied, contemptible and unmanly. Since no real concession was given, the problems that prompted him to require state assent continued to exist. “On general principles,” Tyler wrote, “the right in Congress to prescribe terms to any State implies a superiority of power and control, deprives the transaction of all pretense to compact between them, and terminates, as we have seen, in the total abrogation of freedom of action on the part of the States.” He thus reaffirmed his approval of the compact theory of the national government’s creation.61 Tyler now reaped the whirlwind he had sown. The Whigs were incensed. John Minor Botts, a Virginia Whig congressman, accused the president, in a public letter to a Richmond coffeehouse, of betraying his friends and of rejoining the Democratic party and predicted that Tyler would be “headed,” a verb fraught with insulting connotations for a southern gentleman, and end as “an object of execration.” Late that evening a group of Whig rowdies, emboldened by spirituous liquids, gathered under the White House portico and treated the president and his family to a bitter drunken serenade of trumpets and horns punctuated by shouts of “Huzza for Clay!” and “A Bank! A Bank! Down with the Veto!” They eventually dispersed but returned for a similar bacchanal the following evening. The Tyler women were disturbed and frightened by the nocturnal harassment.62 As news of the veto slowly spread through the country, the Whig rank and file replied with threats and outrage. Effigies of Tyler were hung and burned. The violent reaction to the veto came as a surprise to the president; he had underestimated Whig attachment to the national bank, the expectations created by his own equivocations, the prevailing mood of the Whig party, and the circumstances surrounding the current political situation.63 Whig ideology had long stressed the supremacy of Congress. They believed vetoes ought to be rare, and Tyler’s unprecedented ascension to the presidency due to Harrison’s death increased the outrage. Such aggressive use of the presidential veto power by a man elected to the second office was startling. Many argued that Tyler was a mere caretaker who was duty bound to carry out the Whig agenda, including the bank. The president was also

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known as a vociferous foe of Jackson’s vetoes as an abuse of presidential power—and here he was vetoing. Many labeled it rank hypocrisy.64 Further, the country was in the midst of a pronounced economic depression. Banks throughout the nation had suspended specie payments. A national bank was considered an economic panacea, while a veto sentenced the nation to continued economic stagnation. On top of it all, Whigs were frustrated that, having endured years of political impotence, they were now denied the keystone of their program by their own standard bearer. Incredulous and angry, Whigs endured the further indignity of witnessing the celebrations of their antibank political foes. How could this happen? Democrats were jubilant. The New York Herald complimented Tyler on his “Roman firmness” and “manly independence,” important republican attributes. The Herald touched on the question of personal honor, always intent on keeping before Tyler that concept so vital to a southern gentleman: “Had he [Tyler] acted otherwise, he would have given the lie to his whole life, and stood disgraced in the eyes of his country.” The Richmond Enquirer said “every Republican in the Union” was grateful for Tyler’s “moral courage” and adherence to principle. New York Locofocos fired a one-hundred-gun salute in the president’s honor.65 The Whigs were chagrined but undaunted, continuing a sedulous struggle to create a bank. A tragicomic effort began to forge a compromise between Tyler and Congress. Congressional Whigs deputed a representative from each chamber to jointly call on the president and unofficially inquire of his ideal bank or fiscal agent. Congressman John Sergeant of Pennsylvania and Sen. John M. Berrien of Georgia were chosen. Berrien, a former Jackson attorney general turned Whig, favored a bank. Sergeant was an intimate of Nicholas Biddle and a longtime bank supporter and nationalist. The two met with Tyler the mornings of August 17 and 18. The president was reluctant to deal directly with them, for he thought such activity smacked of presidential dictation and was unconstitutional. Nevertheless, always courteous, Tyler saw the men, and the discussion on the eighteenth was particularly lengthy. A regularly scheduled cabinet meeting was held in the aftermath of the conference. There Tyler insisted on withdrawing personally from the negotiations and asked that cabinet members act as intermediaries to conduct the talks. He wished to influence the shaping of the bill without being obvious and to preserve his freedom of action by avoiding personal identification with the legislation.66 In a bizarre scene at cabinet, Tyler testily queried his own treasury secretary, Thomas Ewing, forcing him to describe the president’s ideal bank or fiscal agent. Ewing nervously began to list the components of the bill the administration introduced at the beginning of the session, now thought by many as the logical fallback after the veto of Clay’s bill. Tyler angrily and surprisingly rebuffed Ewing. The president no longer sup-

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ported the earlier administration bill; his position had hardened. He refused to countenance giving the bank any power to discount (as he had stated in his veto message). As the meeting progressed, it became clear that Tyler favored a bank of very limited powers, a so-called exchange bank. Such an institution would be incorporated by Congress in the District of Columbia, would be prohibited from discounting, and would deal solely in deposits, the safeguarding of government funds, and bills of exchange. Tyler also wanted the entity called something other than a “bank.” He made no mention of requiring it to secure approval before establishing a branch in a state. Webster and Ewing were instructed to deal with the congressmen. Tyler also asked both men to submit separate written evaluations of this new proposal.67 The compromise venture was launched. Webster and Ewing duly met with their congressional counterparts. Congressman Sergeant agreed to introduce a bill meeting Tyler’s specifications in the House. Daniel Webster claimed he personally delivered a copy of the bill to Tyler prior to its introduction. The president perused the bill and suggested a few alterations, including a name change, but said nothing about the sixteenth section, which granted Congress the power to establish branches and would become the focus of contention. Perhaps Tyler was tired and confused by the rapid pace of events and preoccupied with denying the bank the power to discount. As a result he failed to restate his distaste for unfettered branching, leaving the congressmen to infer that it was not a problem for the more modest institution being crafted. Webster afterward conferred with Sergeant, and the changes were incorporated in the final bill before printing. The so-called Fiscal Corporation Bill was introduced in the House by Sergeant on August 20. It was substantially written to the president’s specifications.68 At the moment of seeming triumph, the deal began to go sour. A series of events suddenly coalesced as evidence in Tyler’s mind of a threat to his personal honor and reputation for consistency. Chances for an agreement rapidly diminished. Henry Clay rose on August 19 to address the Senate on Tyler’s veto. Throughout his congressional career, the charismatic yet flawed Kentuckian had verbally bludgeoned the occupant of the White House, criticizing Madison, Monroe, Jackson, and Van Buren in their turn. But Clay had especial motivation for vehemence on this occasion. Imagine the frustration and anger Clay felt by the nineteenth. After having done more to create a Whig party than any other individual, he had been cheated out of its presidential nomination nineteen months previous at a time when Whig prospects had never been better. The indignity was compounded by the selection of William Henry Harrison, a political nonentity. Then Harrison had rewarded Clay’s intraparty political foes

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the patronage plums of electorally crucial New York. Finally, the fool had the bad manners to die, leaving John Tyler in charge. And now Tyler revealed himself to be a republican fanatic of the worst stripe who spurned Clay’s beloved national bank, an entity he believed would strengthen the economy by nationalizing it and thereby knit the United States together, forever dampening sectional tensions. The bank was crucial, in Clay’s mind, to maintenance of the Union. After years in the wilderness, at the moment of triumph, an enemy within the camp snatched sweet victory away and replaced it with abject defeat. Clay was aware of the compromise negotiations. Their success would be more likely if he kept silent. But his frustration boiled over, and he found it impossible to hold his tongue, a recurring character flaw. He delivered a speech of an hour and a half in length that included an offensive personal attack on Tyler. Its caustic tone eliminated any possibility of a rapprochement between the senator and the president. In summary, Clay argued that Tyler had failed to meet Congress in a spirit of compromise. Clay had made substantial concessions throughout the amending process, but his generosity had been met with intransigence at the White House. He argued that the constitutionality of a national bank had been long decided. Four presidents, including Virginians like Washington and Madison as well as General Harrison, five Congresses, and the Supreme Court had vouchsafed a bank. The American people wanted a bank. Tyler was overly concerned with personal honor, with being labeled a hypocrite if he signed off on something he had opposed for a quarter-century. Clay pointed out that Tyler could have dodged such a charge by letting the bill become law without his signature or by resigning his office as he had in 1836. Using loaded terms, Clay called the president’s doomsday predictions about states being unable to act in the time allotted to accept or reject a bank branch “irrational.” Tyler’s veto language was “harsh, if not reproachful.” Clay’s speech was applauded by many Whigs embittered by the turn of events, including Tyler’s own cabinet members.69 The John Minor Botts letter caught up with Tyler on August 20, the same day Sergeant presented the compromise bill to the House. Coming on the heels of Clay’s vituperative speech and the obnoxious demonstrations outside the White House earlier in the week, it caused the normally stoic Tyler to come unhinged. Grim-faced, the president stormed over to the State Department and erupted in an uncharacteristic outpouring of angry grievances to Daniel Webster. The Whigs had betrayed him, made him an object of abuse, and treated him unfairly, Tyler raged. Webster, taken aback, recognized immediately that the possibility of presidential approval for a bank was now in jeopardy. Tyler was incensed. He probably felt cornered. He wanted to compromise, wanted to assist the party

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that had raised him to his present exalted station and had fought side by side with him against the odious dictator and Constitution-wrecker Andrew Jackson. But to do so Tyler would have to abandon his opposition to a national bank, a republican tenet he had nailed to the door like Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses and had maintained from the inception of his political career.70 Further, the language of Clay and Botts, the drunken nocturnal demonstrations at the White House, and the public abuse and effigy hangings around the country, all of which found their way into national newspapers, put Tyler’s personal honor back into play. The president had given himself room to compromise with his veto. If he signed a new bill in its aftermath, he could justifiably argue that he had adhered to principle, to consistency, by forcing concessions from the nationalists. Thus he reduced the risk to his personal honor. But any such advantage now evaporated. The Botts letter and its threat to Tyler’s personal honor, was posted in Tyler’s old political stomping grounds, Richmond, which constituted a direct affront. Any acquiescence by Tyler would now open him to charges that he had been “driven” or “headed” by Botts and others. These code words implied subservience, docility, lack of fortitude, or outright cowardice. A southern gentleman’s honor could not survive the taint of these terms. Were they to attach themselves to Tyler, his political career and standing in the community would be finished. As historian Edward Ayers has argued, honor was largely based on the respect of the public, that is, public opinion. If the public perception of Tyler deteriorated, his personal honor deteriorated. Honor lost was irretrievable.71 Ayers argues that southern gentleman who adhered to the honor code often displayed overelaborate courtesy in public. This courtesy was an acknowledgement and embrace of a social hierarchy, wherein the public’s opinion of an individual categorized him either an honorable gentleman or not. Tyler was a tidewater aristocrat famed for his exaggerated courtesies, his politeness, and his cordiality at public functions. But such genteel displays, writes Ayers, masked the fiery responses that were apt to erupt if the practitioner believed a threat had been made to his personal honor. The southern politician risked more than others because his honor stood prominently before the public, in effect unendingly on trial. Such men had much at stake every day, which explains in part their propensity for hot-tempered reactions, dueling, and fighting.72 Tyler was no exception. The Botts letter and the other incidents filled him with wrath. His anger did not dissipate; it lasted for at least one week, possibly several. The remainder of August was but a hot, dreary prelude to the inevitable denouement—another veto. While Washington sweltered in

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summer’s heat amid complaints in the local newspaper of dusty streets and unattended pigs roaming about and rampaging through gardens, congressional Whigs toiled unendingly on the bill despite rumors of Tyler’s dissatisfaction. The Fiscal Corporation Bill passed the House on Monday, August 23, by a vote of 125 to 94. That same day Tyler broke his own rule of not discussing the bill with congressmen, telling two House members that “he would have his right [arm] cut off, & his left arm too, before he would sign the Bill.” Tyler approached Webster and asked that he lobby the Senate to put aside the measure, urging postponement due to “personal difficulties,” a veiled allusion to personal honor; he could not be “headed” by Botts. Webster reluctantly contacted Massachusetts’s senators, writing Bates and Choate that the Botts letter had changed the situation; the Whigs were obligated not to press the bill lest Tyler be perceived as being “headed.”73 At cabinet meetings that week, Tyler ordered those assembled to work for postponing the bill. How motivated the men were at this point is an open question. They supported the bank and opposed the president’s veto. Only days previous they had been lobbying for a bill written to Tyler’s specifications. Suddenly, the cabinet was faced with an intransigent president who had repudiated his own bill. Regardless of how the cabinet acted, the Senate moved forward, and the Fiscal Corporation passed on September 3 by a vote of twenty-seven to twenty-two. Senator Rives of Virginia voted against the measure.74 Tyler vetoed the Fiscal Corporation bill six days later. His second veto message, dated September 9, lacked the force of the first. It was not well reasoned, was redundant, and contained logical inconsistencies. Tyler’s principal objection was a republican one: Congress could not create a national bank, for that was an unconstitutional assumption of power. He objected to Congress acting not as the local legislature for the District of Columbia incorporating a local bank but as a national legislature incorporating a bank with national operations. He now characterized the presidential veto as a great conservative power that protected the Constitution from adulteration by an unscrupulous or ignorant majority (he used the phrase “mere legislative majority” several times). The logical inconsistency is apparent. Tyler insisted that the national executive’s power be used to protect state sovereignty. Increasing the power of the national executive to safeguard states’ rights? What would Tyler’s republican mentors have said?75 Tyler wrote that the presidential oath to defend the Constitution obligated him to do just that, to protect that document and the nation from majoritarian blunders. But in affirming that duty, Tyler said the Constitution “embodied” the “will of the whole people of the United States.” This passage evoked groans from states’ righters. “Whole people” was the

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imagery of the Marshall Court, of the great Federalists jurors. Tyler had presumably inadvertently stumbled.76 In his first veto Tyler emphasized his problems with local discounting. In his second veto the president at first dismissed the question of whether the bank should be granted the power to discount. All that mattered, wrote Tyler, was that Congress had exceeded its authority by creating a national bank. Later though, he declared that bills of exchange could be manipulated to become a form of local discounting and that and other practices damaged state banks. Discounting mattered, discounting did not matter. A point Tyler raised must have particularly enraged Whigs. He criticized the title of the bill, wherein the entity was called “the Fiscal Corporation of the United States.” Tyler said that the title revealed the bank’s national and therefore, to his mind, objectionable character. Tyler himself named the bill—thus he rejected a title of his own choosing.77 Tyler closed with a plea for delay, for granting him time to prepare a recommendation, a new conception of a fiscal agent, to be presented at the forthcoming regular congressional session. The president wrote that the unique manner in which he came to office entitled him to an interval for reflection. He hoped that differences would not be pushed to extremes.78 Tyler’s son Robert delivered the second veto message to a packed House the morning of Thursday, September 9. The Senate recessed to hear Tyler’s missive, and senators found seats on the House floor while fascinated citizens packed the galleries. The crowd listened intently as the clerk read the message, one that heralded Tyler’s break with the Whig party. Tension and tempers were high, and after the reading, it was thought best to delay consideration of the second veto until the following day. The House returned to the subject under discussion prior to the veto’s arrival, and a tawdry incident occurred that illustrated both the anger and frustration Tyler’s obstinacy kindled as well as the constraints that southern honor dictated to southern politicians.79 Debate resumed on a diplomatic bill. Edward Stanly of North Carolina, another southern congressman with a rather sharp tongue and a short fuse, charged Tyler confidant Henry Wise with inconsistency. The term “inconsistency” was one of opprobrium for southerners. Wise approached Stanly, and the two exchanged words in an undertone. Wise beckoned for Stanly to follow him out of the chamber. Stanly waved him off, refusing. Wise then returned and the two exchanged more insults, with Stanly calling Wise “a liar.” At that Wise struck Stanly, and a general melee ensued. A disreputable scene followed. As Stanly vigorously cuffed Wise, members flocked to the scuffle, surrounding the two men. Some clambered atop desks for a better view, and at least one other fight broke

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out. The Speaker shouted for order, and in a bizarre effort to calm the tempest, the House clerk grasped the sergeant-at-arms’ mace and ran about the pugilists and their gaping colleagues, yelling “order, gentlemen order!” Eventually calm was restored. Southern gentlemen could not tolerate the label “inconsistent” or, even worse, “liar.” Frustration over the veto had boiled over. The fight was a humiliating episode for the Whig Congress and demonstrated not only the seriousness with which southern gentlemen took their personal honor but also the pressure Tyler was under as he contemplated what action was best.80 Whigs were enraged by the second veto. Tyler’s nemesis in the House, John Botts, said of the message, “if a boy of his had written so much Tomfoolery, he would have taken him from school, and put him to the plow.” Botts claimed that Tyler had earlier endorsed a bank in private conversation. Congressman Henry Lane of Indiana said Tyler was guilty of perfidy and his name could be added to the list of other American traitors: Benedict Arnold, Isaac Hull, and Aaron Burr. Sen. Willie P. Mangum said Tyler was “mad, weak & a traitor.” The cabinet met and decided to resign in protest, with the exception of Daniel Webster, who was determined to remain at the State Department. Whigs caucused and blamed Tyler for the party’s failure to pass the bank, figuratively reading him out of the party.81 The extra session came to a nasty and acrimonious finish, with Tyler managing to submit cabinet nominations before the gavel closed business. Tyler showed considerable dexterity in accomplishing this. The new cabinet was more ideologically in tune with his own worldview. Webster continued as secretary of state. Walter Forward replaced Ewing at the Treasury. Forward was a Pennsylvania Whig whom Harrison had appointed the first comptroller of the currency and whose main qualifications for elevation were his Pennsylvania connection and availability. Hugh Legaré, a brilliant South Carolina attorney and states’ rights man, perhaps the foremost international law expert in the United States, received the attorney generalship. John McLean was nominated for the War Department, but McLean was currently an associate justice on the Supreme Court and declined to exchange the lifetime tenure of the bench for the more fleeting tenure of a cabinet slot. Tyler then nominated John C. Spencer of New York. Formerly the secretary of state of the Empire State, Spencer was competent but temperamental. Virginia states’ rights zealot Abel Upshur received the Navy Department. Upshur had been actively lobbying Tyler throughout the year to adhere to a states’ rights course. Finally, Charles A. Wickliffe was selected for postmaster general, a Kentuckian and mortal political enemy of Henry Clay, at whom his appointment was an obvious slap.82 The session boasted solid accomplishments, among them a distribution bill, a bankruptcy law, subtreasury repeal, a twelve-million-dollar

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loan to the Treasury, and a fortification appropriation. Congress failed to do much more than tinker with the revenue laws, postponing concrete action on the revenue shortfall and leaving that serious problem for the next session. But the accomplishments were overshadowed by the dramatic spectacle of a president breaking with his party, the majority party, after assuming office following the death of his predecessor—an extraordinary occurrence. As political theater, the spectacle was riveting, and for Whig partisans, the bitterest of pills, one that engendered a hatred and loathing of John Tyler that would poison the relationship between the executive and Congress for the remainder of his term.83 Tyler was guilty of a number of mistaken judgments. Despite a welldefined record of opposition to the national bank, he allowed a degree of ambiguity to creep in, beginning while in the Senate and then with the Henrico letter. Once he became president he continued to send mixed signals, as when he warned Clay in April of his reservations regarding a bank but then allowed Ewing to publish a probank Treasury report. The latter was probably a product of his republican belief that the Treasury should be largely free of executive dictation. Regardless, confusion reigned, and Whigs developed unrealistic expectations that when dashed led to accusations of bad faith. The first veto was handled in an impolitic manner. The ten-day delay allowed Whig anger to build until it reached a white-hot intensity that startled Tyler and fueled the passionate Botts letter and the nocturnal demonstrations. Tyler thought the delay would calm tempers; it had the precise opposite effect. But Tyler had substantially reduced his vulnerability to the charge of inconsistency by standing on principle and vetoing the first bill. The Whigs then essentially capitulated. He then should have either gone along with the compromise effort of Sergeant and Berrien or simply dismissed it, insisting on postponement as he had successfully done with the effort to bust the tariff limits of the 1833 act. Encouraging and participating but then abruptly drawing back from the bank debate after the congressmen labored to meet his objections created the appearance of bad faith and led to the irrevocable break with the Whigs. The president’s record under the unique circumstances of his ascension deserves a measure of praise. The importance of personal honor is apparent throughout. It was vital for Tyler to adhere to the republican principles he had honored throughout his life. Despite some waffling, perhaps out of a desire to please his colleagues, Tyler stood by his beliefs, and constancy for principle is always admirable. Having firmly grasped the reins of the presidency following Harrison’s death, Tyler clearly demonstrated his intention to govern with the full powers the office possessed. He quashed all ambiguity about his status as

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president, of which there was a considerable degree, and thereby set an important, indeed vital, precedent that future vice presidents followed. Tyler’s aggressive assumption of the presidency saved the United States from the weakness, instability, and factional warfare that a more timid approach would have inspired, a kind of democratic regency dominated by Congress. Ironically, Tyler’s vetoes were in the Jacksonian tradition. Andrew Jackson had said that the president was the ultimate guarantor of liberty, an assertion that republicans like Tyler found an obnoxious aggrandizement of the executive. Yet it was precisely this rationale that Tyler professed when he argued that the veto was a great conservative power that protected the American people from the gaffes of a tyrannical majority; the president was liberty’s guardian. On balance, Tyler probably performed a valuable service by rejecting the national bank. Had he approved one, Democrats were pledged to bring forward a repeal resolution, and the country would have faced yet another protracted bank war, an exhausting prospect. It is tragic that a national consensus in favor of a national bank could not have been engendered, for it offered very real advantages, foremost of which were currency regulation and stability. Without it, the developing economy of the United States lurched along, plagued by cycles of currency boom and bust, sometimes afflicted by a sea of bad notes that fueled hyperspeculation with the inevitable crash ensuing, at other times by an absolute dearth of currency that damaged debtors and enriched creditors while reducing thousands to a barter economy. But the Jacksonian bank wars, coupled with the financial criminality of the Bank of the United States’s own managers, soured forever the desire of many Americans for a national bank. Tyler prevented the resumption of a war long since lost. John Tyler now faced the daunting prospect of governing with an embittered majority that saw him as a traitor and a revitalized opposition hungry to exploit the division. Worse still, the nation’s coffers were empty, and the only way to replenish them was to alter the tariff, that divisive issue that nearly precipitated a civil war in 1833. The tariff would have to be revisited, a frightening prospect. As the December date of the next session of the Twenty-seventh Congress loomed, the sky was figuratively dark and threatening, the wind howling into a gale and the sea breaking white and fierce. A political storm was seething, and John Tyler, as captain of the ship of state, beat to quarters and prepared to give battle.

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The Terrible Tariff and Distribution Too Tyler’s second veto of the bank bill was followed by the mass resignation of the Harrison cabinet, with the exception of Daniel Webster. A congressional Whig caucus figuratively read Tyler out of the party in a manifesto published around the country. But Tyler was more comfortable with his new cabinet, whom he characterized as original Jackson men, individuals who had broken with Andrew Jackson over perceived executive usurpation but who also loathed a national bank and were committed to republican principles. John Spencer, the new secretary of war, had served in the House with Tyler, while Abel Upshur, the new secretary of the navy, was a fellow Virginian and strong states’ rights proponent. At the end of September, 1841, Tyler designated the Madisonian, a Washington newspaper, as the administration organ, and his supporters purchased a controlling interest and installed John Jones as editor.1 However contented with the new cabinet, Tyler remained ruffled and angry. He could not forget the Botts letter and its promise to “head” him, a potent threat to personal honor; the nasty invective of Clay’s August speech, which sundered a friendship of more than two decades; the shrill cries and shouted obscenities of the drunken rowdies standing beneath the windows of the White House, wherein reposed his ailing wife and beloved daughters and sons; the effigy burnings; and the disloyal cabinet. Much of the abuse menaced Tyler’s personal honor, which had to be safeguarded lest his political viability and more importantly, community standing, be destroyed. The preservation of personal honor was never far from the president’s mind. “What else have I said or done in regard to

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measures before the country than to shield and protect myself from the charges of treason, baseness, moral turpitude which an infamous cabal has sought to raise against me,” Tyler wrote in a missive in October, 1841, to Caleb Cushing, a Massachusetts congressman and ally. Honor had to be preserved, and compromise with those who attempted to deprive him of that sacred attribute was not possible. The Washington Madisonian opined that Tyler never would “seek to obtain the support of men who, for a difference of opinion on a single point, could denounce him as a traitor . . . , burnt in effigy, and his name . . . mingled . . . with the curses of dupes.”2 The importance of the honor code to Tyler’s thinking and actions was further confirmed when certain Virginia Whig newspapers suggested that the president had satisfied the dictates of the code, had proven his independence, and could therefore afford to compromise. This provoked an angry Madisonian retort: “Was there ever impudence so unblushing! They advise him . . . as to what his honor requires, who have zealously set themselves to work to strip him of all claim to honorable standing among men! who have sought to blacken his heretofore unsullied name, and who have persecuted him for months past with malignity untiring and scarcely equalled; ‘traitor,’ ‘wretch,’ ‘treason,’ ‘infamy’—these are the epithets with which they have attempted to terrify and destroy him, because he would not in fact become infamous by the commission of the crime of perjury.” The gulf that separated Tyler and the Whigs was vast, and the honor code’s dictates not only had helped create that gulf but also seemed to render it unbridgeable.3 Abel Upshur, the secretary of the navy, confirmed as much to Beverley Tucker. Tyler had told him, Upshur wrote, that nothing could be expected from the Clay Whigs and that Democrats were unlikely to accept him either. The president thought his only option was to form his own political organization with states’ rights men like Upshur and Tucker as the nucleus. At the end of November, 1841, the Madisonian pronounced the possibilities of a rapprochement between Tyler and the Whigs dead, declaring that the fragmented Whig party, like Humpty Dumpty, could not be put together again. Upshur and Virginia states’ rightists thought that was fine; they had tried to have Webster, long associated with Federalism in their minds, removed as secretary of state in September, shunted off to the Court of St James. Upshur and the others always sought to guide Tyler down the states’ rights path in policy.4 In September the acerbic John Quincy Adams confided to his diary that the breakup of Tyler’s cabinet portended the downfall of the Whig party throughout the country. State elections that fall confirmed Adams’s prophecy. Democrats surged back from the political depths to which they had plunged in 1840, winning governors’ races in Georgia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania while securing the legislatures of Georgia, New York,

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and Ohio as well as the Maryland House of Delegates. Whig performance was equally poor in other states, and even where they held on to power, their vote totals were down. “The Whirlwind has indeed come,” crowed Thomas Ritchie, Democratic editor of the Richmond Enquirer, who hoped that the newly Democratic state legislatures would act as bulwarks against the Whig national legislature, as Ritchie believed they had in 1798–99 when faced with the Alien and Sedition Acts. The New York Herald reported the elections with a jocular reference to Henry Clay and his manservant Charles: “The extra session has revolutionized half the whig states, and made them locofoco. ‘Charles,’ says Harry Clay, ‘bring me no more of these d——d extras.’” Martin Van Buren received congratulatory letters from Democrats, who interpreted the victories as a vindication of his administration.5 The National Intelligencer and other newspapers and Whig politicians attributed the rout to apathy on the part of a Whig rank and file demoralized, despite a largely successful special session, by the demise of that jewel of the Whig agenda, the national bank, dispatched by the vetoes of a Whig president. Given the circumstances, the poor showing did not surprise Henry Clay. “An army which believes itself betrayed by its Commander in Chief, will never fight well under him or whilst he remains in authority. Our defeats have not been produced by any accession of strength to our adversaries, but simply because our friends would not go to the polls. I think they were wrong, but their conduct was natural.” John Calhoun concluded that the causes of the Whig debacle went deeper and were more serious and harder to overcome: fraudulent tactics to win power, violating promises, and “dangerous” principles. Whatever the true causes, the Whigs were a trifle unmanned as 1841 drew to a close. “The Whig party . . . is splitting up into a thousand fragments,” moaned John Quincy Adams.6 The legacy of the special session was a brimming well of bitterness, and a byproduct of that anger and frustration was a political atmosphere seeded with paranoia and suspicion. The president deemed himself the victim of a “base” and “well planned” conspiracy designed to knock him out of contention for the presidency. The “vile conspirators” were led by Henry Clay, who purposely provoked the vetoes to eliminate Tyler as a competitor for the 1844 Whig presidential nomination. Tyler’s associates and supporters echoed these charges and, throughout the forthcoming congressional session, portrayed Whig actions as the product of a conspiracy.7 Pro-Tyler newspapers like the New York Herald and the administration organ, the Washington Madisonian, repeatedly spied conspiracies hostile to the president and thunderously denounced them. The Madisonian argued in July, 1842, that conspirators in the House of Representatives planned to

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impeach Tyler, remove his power as president via a congressional resolution while he waited for trial before the Senate, and bestow the authority upon the president pro tem of the Senate, Willie P. Mangum. Alone without a party, Tyler invited, said the Madisonian, “the spirit of faction,” “the secret cabal,” and “the midnight plot.” The Herald charged that a conspiracy was hatched at the beginning of the second session to obstruct passage of the appropriation bills, to do nothing, and to literally jam the gears of the government until Tyler caved and submitted his resignation.8 Opposing Whigs were just as vulnerable to the conspiracy mania as Tyler and his cohorts. The National Intelligencer declared a conspiracy had effected Tyler’s estrangement from the Whig party, but the villain in its scenario was not Henry Clay, as Tyler envisioned. The culprits were the Democrats, the Intelligencer explained, particularly Democratic newspapers like the Richmond Enquirer and certain Virginia states’ rights zealots like Beverley Tucker and Abel Upshur. These papers and men worked to inflame Tyler’s republican sensibilities and states’ rights consciousness by emphasizing threats to his honor and standing, such as trumpeting the Botts letter from August, 1841, which had threatened to “head” Tyler. As the National Intelligencer put it, there was “a deliberate design to work upon the President’s sensibilities by producing an impression on his mind that there is a sort of conspiracy among the Whigs to shape the legislation of Congress so as to obstruct his wishes.” Tyler believed the Whigs were engaged in a concerted effort to ruin him, and the National Intelligencer felt that a Democratic and states’ rights cabal worked to foster and fix that impression in the president’s mind. Some Democrats contracted the fever too; Martin Van Buren’s son Smith Thompson Van Buren thought Tyler’s actions during the special session smacked of a deliberate design, the object of which was his separation from the Whig party so that he could govern as an Old Republican.9 As is typical with these sorts of fantasies, there was always an element of truth in each meticulously spun conspiracy web that lent it a degree of credibility. States’ rights champions like Upshur did indeed want to be free of the Whig party, and Tyler wanted to govern upon a basis of traditional republican principles. After his break with Tyler, Henry Clay wanted to win the presidential nomination in 1844. But it was an error to inflate these kernels of fact into vast secret societies bent on achieving objectives through nefarious tactics. So the political atmosphere in the fall of 1841 was fatally compromised and poisoned, and it was within that context that Tyler and the Whig congressional majority struggled to solve a great national financial crisis. Democrats were pleased with the new electoral prosperity that came with the fall elections, a change in fortune due less to anything they had done than to Whig intraparty acrimony. Success at the state level paved the

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way for retaking the Congress the following year, an outcome that appeared increasingly likely. Democrats were now so ebullient that leaders warned against the pitfalls of overconfidence and the possibility of internecine feuds amid jockeying for the presidential nomination in 1844.10 Democrats wrestled with another question: what was the correct attitude toward John Tyler? The consensus opinion was that the president ought to be supported whenever he acted in consonance with Democratic principles and, furthermore, that Democrats should stand with him if the Whigs implemented any of the wild schemes aimed at his removal. Beyond that Democrats were not prepared to go. Party leaders warned that Tyler was not pure enough in his devotion to their principles to merit broad support; he had, after all, signed much Whig legislation during the extra session. The president was certainly not going to be welcomed back into the Democrat fold so that he could become the nominee in 1844. “The political party, to which we are attached from principle, can never think of rallying on Mr. Tyler. That point is clearly settled,” wrote a Democrat whose opinion was probably shared by many others. The claims of Democratic stalwarts like Martin Van Buren and John Calhoun had too great a purchase on the hearts of the Democratic faithful for them to be dropped for Tyler. Democrats also judged Tyler as politically unreliable and excessively mercurial in his opinions.11 Tyler’s weakened political capacity sparked early jockeying for the 1844 presidential nomination in both parties. Tyler wanted to run again; proof of that intention came when he passed up two opportunities in 1841 to embrace the one-term pledge, as his late predecessor General Harrison had done. Upon becoming president in April, 1841, Tyler could have followed Harrison’s example and pledged to serve a single term, but he did not. And again, at a September cabinet meeting, Tyler raised the succession issue for discussion and allowed cabinet members to dissuade him, without much resistance, from withdrawing from the presidential horserace, which prompted the historian James Schouler to conclude that “this only shows that his mind attached an importance to such a sacrifice; and at all events the impulse to stand aside shifted more quickly than the wish to gain credit for it.” As the months wore on, Tyler’s undeclared intention to run again became increasingly obvious to political Washington. The president’s paper, the Washington Madisonian, vigorously assailed Clay and other possible rivals, while Tyler flayed about trying to build a coalition of moderates that would back him. The president probably sent feelers to Democrats as well, but they had scant interest in backing the Virginian.12 Other political luminaries planned to challenge Tyler, and the field was soon crowded with aspirants. As the New York Herald put it in November, “This important business is going ahead like a railroad car down an

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inclined plane.” Winfield Scott wrote a letter announcing his interest in the presidential nomination, the missive appearing in newspapers. Henry Clay felt he had been cheated out of the nomination in 1840 and hoped to snare the prize in 1844. Democratic triumphs in state elections prompted Martin Van Buren to publicly clarify his position, which was that he would not refuse the nomination. John Calhoun concluded that the prostration of the Whig party furnished a unique opportunity to purge the national government of Federalism and restore the Constitution to its proper limits. But for reform to succeed the presidency had to be captured, and the South Carolinian envisioned himself filling that post. Calhoun thought the circumstances growing out of the Tyler-Whig split heralded his best chance to date at capturing the Democratic nomination. The Herald argued that Tyler could peel moderates from both parties and become a serious contender, disrupting unity in both major political parties, and described the situation as analogous to the waning days of the Monroe administration, when the breakup of the old Republican party inspired a number of possible presidential candidates. The Herald believed that the resulting multiple-candidate race in 1844, as in 1824, would end in the House of Representatives, and such a possibility increased the importance of the next House elections.13 While aspirants lined up to challenge Tyler for the presidency in 1844, the business of governing the nation went forward. The president worked diligently on his annual message, submitting it to the cabinet for critical review, which Abel Upshur considered an omen of maturity and modesty. And indeed the message, sent to Congress on December 7, 1841, is a well-written document that evinces a measured and mature tone with no trace of the bitterness and lashing anger that surfaced in Tyler’s private correspondence.14 Tyler allotted two notable paragraphs to Texas. He clearly signaled an interest in that youthful republic, an attentiveness he had first revealed in an October letter to Daniel Webster in which Tyler pressed for annexation. Webster demurred so the plan was shelved—for the time being. Now, in his annual message, Tyler reported on the progress of a commission tasked to determine the correct boundary between Texas and the United States. He said the United States would always manifest a “deep interest” in Texas, noted that Texas was settled primarily by Americans, and saluted the infant republic for providing another example of the efficacy of free institutions to a despotic world. Tyler’s ambitious design for Texas was sidetracked by Webster’s reservations, but these comments indicate that the president’s gaze remained fixed on that prize. He was demonstrating again his republican devotion to an expansive destiny for the United States, acquiring space for settlement by the virtuous farmers upon whom the American Republic depended.15

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Tyler took note of the financial crunch facing the U.S. government, a problem that was described in more explicit terms in Treasury Secretary Walter Forward’s report. The president hoped moderation and patriotism, spirits that animated the debate in 1833, would guide the representatives as they revised the tariff. He endorsed discrimination in duties—that is, taxing at variable rates—as acceptable for reasons of utility and for reasons having to do with manufacturing, a vague endorsement of at least incidental protection and a significant concession from a man who once characterized a protective tariff as a despoiler of the American pastoral Eden. Since the Compromise of 1833 mandated an across-theboard maximum duty level of 20 percent, Tyler’s endorsement of variable rates was a silent repudiation of the cardinal feature of that once sanctified agreement. It was perhaps also a quiet acknowledgement of the realities facing a candidate for another term who wanted to snare the backing of a protariff state like Pennsylvania. Yet Tyler also affirmed his support for the compromise by stating that he hoped the Congress would do nothing to disrupt the distribution of land-sales proceeds, which had to be suspended under the language of the Land Act of September, 1841, whenever duties rose above the tariff’s 20 percent limit.16 This is known as trying to have it both ways. Variable duty levels below 20 percent were probably too small to have any effect on the government’s financial fortunes unless levied on items of mass consumption like coffee or sugar, which was politically difficult, so Tyler had to be considering rates above 20 percent. Yet he was too cagey to come right out and say so at this point and risk the opprobrium of inconsistency, again, a threat to his honor and community standing that was especially strong given his personal involvement in the negotiations that had led to the 1833 act and his longstanding fealty to the result. With the federal government broke, Tyler had little option but to endorse tariff increases above the sacred 20percent level; even if land-sales proceeds were retained, they were not great enough to solve the shortage, and the alternative to high duties was more debt. Yet good republicans had deplored the creation of public debt since the time of Alexander Hamilton. Repudiating the compromise had to be approached gingerly, carefully, with the compelling necessity that overrode the southern politician’s imperative to be starkly consistent before the public. By far the largest portion of Tyler’s address was given to the ongoing currency crisis and his proposed solution in the form of an alternative to both the Whig national bank and the Democratic Independent Treasury. The president described the mess wrought by state banks that issued buckets of notes whose value fluctuated widely over time and from region to region. As a republican, Tyler had an ingrained distaste for paper money, that tool of the speculator so destructive of the common farmer and

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laborer, but he had imbibed enough of Whig doctrine to recognize the inadequacy of a currency restricted to specie in a growing economy. His solution to the problem was a financial institution, which he called the Exchequer, regulated by a centrally located board of control with agencies placed throughout the nation. To create a common and reliable medium of exchange, the Exchequer could issue notes that would be strictly redeemable in gold or silver. It could receive deposits, though only to a limit, lest state banks be harmed, and some of the agency’s powers were subject to state approval, both concessions to strict construction. In another bow to his republican sensibilities, Tyler firmly expressed his desire to keep the purse and the sword separated, that is, to eliminate as far as possible the president’s involvement in such matters.17 The best aspect of Tyler’s plan was its proposal for a circulating paper currency backed by gold and the faith and credit of the national government. Were such a system adopted, the numerous state-bank notes floating about might have been supplanted, much to the benefit of commerce. Farmers, who might receive in payment a confused bundle of dirty notes of varying value from several state banks, would finally receive a medium of dependable monetary worth. By endorsing paper as a national currency, Tyler was demonstrating recognition of the correctness of Whig economic philosophy, which stressed economic growth and the necessity of financial instruments to accommodate it. The country was apt to start growing again and, boom or bust, gold and silver were in too short supply to be an effective national medium, while state banks were too unreliable. Tyler had the courage to recognize the needs of the country and the vision to suggest a policy to meet those requirements, however distasteful paper money was to his republican sentiments.18 Ultimately, though, concessions to republicanism harmed the utility of the plan and its prospects for widespread support. Rendering the agencies subject to state laws made problematic the ability of Tyler’s Exchequer to act in a uniform manner nationwide. Limiting the amount of notes to fifteen million dollars was also a mistake. A board of control raised a host of issues about who would serve, the number of members, length of service, compensation, who would have authority over members, and who would appoint the membership. Tyler had created a hybrid of sorts—a middle ground between the national bank and the Independent Treasury—designed to placate and draw to him moderate Whigs and conservative Democrats. What Tyler and his friends overlooked was that, by adopting this tack, the plan created instant foes of those who advocated a national bank and of those who wanted an Independent Treasury, formidable enemies and, if united in opposition to the plan, unbeatable. It was not enough of a bank for Clay’s probank minions and yet too much of one for antibank forces. Specie zealots like Sen. Thomas Hart Benton of

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Missouri abhorred the proposal to flood the nation with paper. Not to be overlooked was the considerable bitterness left over from the special session, leaving the Whig majority disinclined to rush eagerly to the support of any Tyler proposal.19 Five days before Christmas, Treasury Secretary Forward submitted his report on the condition of the Treasury, and the memorandum was no gaily wrapped gift. The federal government’s deficit was estimated to be $627,000 by the end of 1841. In the rustic phrases of the New York Herald’s Washington correspondent, the Treasury was so empty there was “not a rock to throw at a dog.” Forward recommended issuing Treasury notes to cover the shortage, a proposal Whigs found distasteful, for they had criticized the Van Buren administration for doing the same. But the immediate shortfall was only the tip of the financial iceberg looming before the ship of state. Forward’s estimate of receipts and expenditures for the coming year (1842) foretold a fiscal calamity. Expenses far outpaced revenues, leaving an enormous projected deficit for fiscal 1842 of over $14,000,000. The deficit was frightening not only in size but also in timing, coming as it did on top of years of depressed economic conditions and after the election of a Whig Congress and president pledged to restore the national fortunes. It would be yet another political catastrophe for the reeling Whigs, a signal that they were no better at lifting the country out of distress than Van Buren and the Democrats had been.20 Forward proposed three methods to avoid the projected deficit: extend the term offered on the unsubscribed portion of the outstanding loan approved during the extra session, reissue five million dollars in Treasury notes, and make carefully measured increases in tariff duties designed only to meet the minimal needs of the government. In addition, Forward argued that in order for duties to be collected under home valuation as required by the Compromise Act of 1833, Congress had to pass legislation regulating the process. Without this, Forward questioned the legality of customs officials carrying on with the collection of duties. The Treasury secretary posited a veritable nightmare—a country unable to gather import duties and deprived of the sole remaining source of revenue, since land-sales moneys were distributed to the states by the Land Act of September, 1841. Later, Whigs mistakenly relied on Forward’s opinion and apocalyptic vision for political leverage against Tyler, only to be thwarted.21 Taking his cue from Tyler, Forward affirmed the sacred Compromise of 1833 while nonetheless proposing duties greater than 20 percent. He argued that protection was necessary for some items lest Americans employed in vulnerable industries be thrown out of work by foreign competition. Forward, and Tyler by extension, endorsed a limited form of protection, a loosening of the philosophical moorings that the president

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so vociferously held to; practical realities had compelled Tyler to jettison deeply held beliefs. Without revenue the government would collapse, and with the depressed economy, uniform duties at 20 percent would not produce enough to cover expenses. Either duties were raised or anarchy could potentially ensue. Tyler swallowed what on the face seems one of those unpalatable inconsistencies that could threaten the personal honor so important to the southern politician. But his Virginia predecessors provided precedents that would be termed today “political cover”: Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe all had reversed themselves on important issues while in the executive mansion. Tyler tried to lessen the obviousness of his retreat with assertions, in his message and elsewhere, emphatically advocating restricting duty levels to the minimum necessary to operate the government, with protection always incidental to that main goal. If protection could be granted by selectively raising duties on certain articles while not transgressing that limitation, then so be it. Greater increases would, as Tyler had argued earlier in his career, benefit the North at the expense of the South.22 Given the circumstances that prompted the deal in 1833—that is, possible civil war—it could be expected that southern opposition to these proposals to set aside the compromise would be pronounced. But the reaction was muted. The South was generally more disposed now to accept a higher tariff. Cotton factories had sprung up along the Atlantic since 1832. Sugar planters in Louisiana and hemp manufacturers in Kentucky advocated higher duty levels, and senators from both states consistently voted in favor of a higher tariff throughout the session. The policy of declining duty levels was linked in the public consciousness with the panic and subsequent depression, as Henry Clay gleefully pointed out to John Calhoun, arguing that Calhoun’s free-trade policy had caused cotton prices to descend to rock-bottom levels. Rumors reached the United States that British investors were aggressively pursuing the development of cotton growing in India and the East Indies. A reasonable tariff that stimulated the growth of a home market might be a good precaution against future competition from the British Empire, some southern planters concluded.23 Congress opened with the Whigs depressed, the Democrats elated, and Tyler unrealistically optimistic that his Exchequer plan would surmount bitterness and party loyalty to secure passage. Perhaps exhausted by the vicious struggles of the extra session, Congress opened with a lull. Instead of falling on each other and the Tyler administration, both Whigs and Democrats, with few exceptions, were at first somewhat subdued. Henry Clay arrived in Washington with a bad cold and was almost immediately confined to bed. His illness lingered, and the Whigs were deprived of their preeminent leader. Other Whigs hoped to come to an under-

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standing with the Tyler administration for the sake of the still-suffering country, and so there was a reluctance to pitch in and begin anew the battle broken off by the September recess, for that might drive Tyler further into the arms of the Democrats. “By forebearance, we at least weaken our enemies, our natural enemies, the enemies of religion, peace, decency & laws—the loco-focos,” said North Carolina Whig congressman Edward Stanly, helpfully explaining the Whigs’ temporary inactivity. Democrats had the luxury of minority status in both chambers, which meant they were under no obligation to present an affirmative agenda. They could sit back and wait for the Whigs to bring forth their program and then snipe at it.24 A key issue, perhaps the key issue of the session once Whigs and Democrats shook off their transient lethargy, was distribution. By the terms of the act of September 4, 1841, proceeds from the sale of public lands were distributed to the states, with the caveat that when tariff duties rose above the 20-percent level the disbursement of funds was to be suspended. Tyler demanded and received this limitation, perhaps as a measure of fealty to the Compromise of 1833. At the time of passage, it was thought that the government could survive on the revenue of a 20-percent tariff, but at the end of 1841 it was obvious that this was not the case. The federal government faced a revenue crunch that threatened bankruptcy, and it could ill-afford to jettison any revenue source, however stunted land sales were compared to the glory days preceding the Panic of 1837.25 Democrats strongly opposed distribution and resolved to repeal it, preferably during the present congressional session. The Washington Globe called distribution “the Universal Bribery bill.” John Calhoun told Democratic party chieftain Francis P. Blair that repeal of the distribution bill “must be one of the leading objects of the party.” Silas Wright suggested that Democrats refuse to cooperate in any measure to raise revenue until distribution was dropped.26 Distribution was anathema to Democrats for a variety of reasons. They said it led to higher tariff rates as the government was forced to compensate for lost revenue. Duty levels were increased on common everyday items rather than simply on luxuries, so the taxes were regressive, falling disproportionately on the poor. The states meanwhile invested the funds in internal improvements that did not, again according to Democrats, benefit a broad enough segment of society. There were also republican concerns, worries that the funds infringed on state independence, created a dependency relationship between federal and state governments, and increased congressional control and influence in state affairs. Distribution encouraged irresponsible spending, and states heavily into debt would receive little relief as the per-state share was minuscule. To illustrate the latter point, the Chicago Democrat pointed out that Illinois’s

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share amounted to $37,000, while the state’s debt was a whopping $14,000,000 with an annual interest payment of $750,000. A tiny drop in the debt bucket, distribution payments were hardly the answer to the financial crunch in Illinois. Democrats planned to use their new majorities in state legislatures to pass resolutions spurning federal distribution funds and instructing their congressmen to repeal the act.27 Whigs were just as determined to retain distribution while conquering the revenue crisis by pushing tariff rates above 20 percent. To accomplish that, the proviso suspending distribution when duties rose above that level, which assured Tyler’s signature on the bill in September, 1841, would have to be repealed. Both Whigs and Democrats were working to “repeal” legislation but at cross-purposes. Democrats wanted either to repeal distribution entirely or to defeat the Whig effort to drop the suspending provision. Whigs wanted to repeal that provision so distribution would continue, which had the added desirability of spurring higher duties, a traditional Whig objective.28 Tyler had generally favored distribution throughout his career. He had explained his position on the issue in an 1839 report to the Virginia House of Delegates and also in his message to Congress of June 1, 1841. In contrast to Democrats, who viewed the payments as a threat to state sovereignty, a seductress charming states into a fatal federal embrace, Tyler considered the land money a boon to states’ rights. His argument, as in so many matters, was distinctly republican, an affirmation of a compact. The president harkened back to the original agreements whereby states ceded territory to the federal government. He believed these accords warranted that Congress hold the lands in trust for the equal benefit of every state; by contrast, federal internal-improvement bills, funded in part by landsales proceeds, were unconstitutional and unequally parceled out, with the North benefiting disproportionately. If Congress distributed revenue from the sale of these lands equally to each state, it was acting in a constitutional fashion and in accordance with the intent of the original compacts. Further, in 1841 Tyler argued that so many states were overly burdened with debt that their weakened condition threatened the balance inherent in the federal character of American government. States were the guardians of American liberty according to republican theory, and weak states were vulnerable to federal power and dominance. Land funds would restore fiscal health to states: both credit and prosperity would revive, states would not have to impose direct taxes that fell disproportionately on laboring people, and the nation would not succumb to a system of consolidated government.29 Tyler qualified his endorsement of distribution in 1841 with one caveat, which posed a problem. In his June message, the president had recommended distribution as long as it did not cause duties to grow above

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20 percent. The result was the act dated September 4, 1841, which included a clause suspending distribution if rates increased over 20 percent. Longstanding southern grievances against the tariff fueled, in part, Tyler’s insistence on this limitation. During the 1832 crisis over tariff rates, he had expressed his sympathy with South Carolina’s denunciation of the tariff for draining the South while flooding northern coffers. Any measure that robbed the federal government of revenue was a potential stimulus to higher duties. Tyler opposed an 1832 land bill out of concern for its effect on tariff rates. When Andrew Jackson retired the federal debt and the government began to run a surplus, Tyler, ever the republican, supported distribution to deny those funds to a tyrannical executive. Always he had insisted that distribution not cause the tariff to increase.30 Whigs were intent on higher duties and retaining distribution. Democrats wanted neither. Tyler was publicly on record in favor of distribution only if tariff rates remained below 20 percent, and in his December message he had implicitly conceded that rates would have to move above that level. Incredibly, the stage was set for another confrontation between Tyler and the Whigs, with distribution replacing the national bank as the point of contention, a struggle that would once again place John Tyler’s personal honor into the balance. The lull that greeted the opening of the second session of the Twentyseventh Congress, as Whigs and Democrats figuratively circled each other, searching for clues to their respective strategies like punch-drunk fighters in the late rounds of a fight, gradually came to an end under the prodding of the antislavery movement and its congressional allies. This session marked a turning point for the abolitionists. As a recent historian of the gag-rule battle, William Miller, explained, “now they were to take the initiative and carry the battle to the ‘enemy’—to seek, and to make, occasions to take up the issue of slavery openly.” A small coterie of antislavery congressmen and fellow travelers designated slavery as their top legislative priority, trumping even economic issues in the midst of a depression. Assisted by Joshua Leavitt, editor of the abolitionist paper the Emancipator, the men formed a self-described select committee on slavery that met and planned coordinated action and agitation. Their objective was simple: to bring the issue of slavery before the House despite the gag rule by introducing petitions and resolutions that did not openly advocate abolition but could be turned into a speech or debate on slavery. The speeches would then be printed at government expense and disseminated across the country. The federal imprimatur would give them a status and credibility an ordinary abolition tract never possessed. The antislavery caucus hired Theodore Weld to assist with research and soon gained a valuable ally in John Quincy Adams.31 The traditional month devoted to the reception of constituents’

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petitions, and some weeks thereafter, were dominated by Adams and the antislavery enclave introducing inflammatory petitions indirectly attacking slavery. Southern congressmen were furious and their anger mounted. A kind of breaking point was reached at the end of January, 1842, when Adams presented a petition from Benjamin Emerson and forty-five citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, requesting that Congress dissolve the Union because they could not tolerate the slaveholding South. The House erupted in outrage, and two members, former Virginia governor and Tyler intimate Thomas W. Gilmer and Thomas Marshall of Kentucky, moved to censure Adams. A protracted two-week censure debate followed and legislative gridlock ensued, the House unable to deal with measures to relieve a bone-dry Treasury and a suffering nation prostrate from the prolonged depression. The Richmond Enquirer said Adams had “become a bore and a nuisance and a firebrand to the nation.” Adams’s mail teemed with death threats, including a portrait of him with a neatly drawn musket-ball hole in the center of his forehead. Not until February 7 did the House, wearied by Adams’s forcible defense, vote to table censure and move beyond the intractable subject of slavery, at least for the moment, as southerners realized the debate was not helping their cause.32 The frustration of the nation was palpable. The Washington Madisonian complained that important bills were “slumbering on the Speaker’s table.” The Washington Globe opined that Democrats could not be blamed for the chaos in Congress, for it was a product of conflict between Whig factions. The Globe argued that the debate revealed the true abolitionist goal: disunion. Its New York correspondent worried that the unruly proceedings of Congress, the name-calling, quarreling, fist fights, duels, and general neglect of public business, were undermining public confidence in republican institutions and might lead to the reinstitution of divine right and hereditary succession. The reporter heard Congress referred to by disparaging sobriquets: “Menagerie,” “Bear Garden,” “The Lyceum of Boxing.”33 Democrats were pleased with this demonstration of Whig paralysis. Democratic congressman Robert McClellan wrote that each day in the House brought further disruption and chaos as the entire session into February was dominated by infighting between Whig factions. South Carolina Democrat Francis Pickens said he had never known a greater state of confusion in public affairs: a Federalist Congress, the American people supporting the minority Democrats, and an isolated president without any party backing. Continued Whig disorganization and disorder could only aid the Democratic cause.34 Amid a Congress consuming itself in angry debate, John Tyler tried in vain to garner support for his Exchequer plan, which he viewed as a kind

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of keystone of the administration effort to restore fiscal health and spark a rebirth of economic growth and prosperity. The administration organ, the Washington Madisonian, flayed away with weeks of editorials promoting the scheme. But the bitter bile of the extra-session vetoes prevented the Whigs from swallowing it, and Democrats were eternally wedded to the Independent Treasury that Tyler and the Whigs had sunk the previous summer. “The plan of an Exchequer meets with but little favor from either party,” wrote Henry Clay, and it was certainly true. So the primary proposal the president advanced for the congressional session was pronounced dead on arrival.35 In addition to that setback, Tyler was buffeted by other storms. Various Whigs attacked him in floor speeches; Sen. Alexander Barrow of Louisiana, for example, said that Tyler had earned the “ridicule” of Democrats and the “scorn” of the Whigs. The Exchequer scheme was dead, and neither body was in any great haste to relieve the president’s obvious distress over the ongoing revenue shortfall. The administration was left twisting in the wind, its small band of congressional supporters powerless to alter the pace of the proceedings. The Madisonian complained that the Senate took three weeks just to refer the Exchequer plan to a committee.36 Tyler’s political afflictions were matched by domestic heartache. It became increasingly clear that his wife, long incapacitated by a stroke, was failing. Mrs. Letitia Tyler’s sole public appearance during her husband’s White House tenure occurred on January 31, 1842, when the Tylers’ daughter Elizabeth wed William Waller of Williamsburg, Virginia. That joyous occasion temporarily lifted the gloomy atmosphere pervading the executive mansion as the matriarch deteriorated. “Sadness lay like a shadow upon the household,” intoned the biographer of Priscilla Cooper Tyler, the president’s daughter-in-law, who had assumed hostess duties in Mrs. Tyler’s stead. By one account President Tyler worked arduous hours to avoid dealing with the approaching death of his wife. He gave vent to his anguish, political and to a degree personal, in a letter dated February 19 and sent in response to an invitation to attend a Philadelphia Washington’s birthday celebration. It is a remarkable and self-abasing document that reveals Tyler’s state of mind. He felt besieged and unjustly put upon by political foes he labeled with the ultimate eighteenth-century republican pejorative—faction. Implicit in the letter was a plea for some understanding, some compassion for a man fate had placed in a disadvantageous position. Tyler’s anger surfaced, particularly his resentment at what he believed was an insistence that he sacrifice his personal honor for the sake of his party, something he was incapable of doing.37 In the letter Tyler reviewed the circumstances of his assumption of the presidency in a candid and somewhat self-pitying fashion. He argued that when a presidential candidate was chosen, he became the leader of his

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party and set the policy agenda with the confident expectation of party support. The vice president, wrote Tyler, could hope for no similar advantages upon assuming the presidency. Obviously referring to his own situation, he noted that the vice president was often a remote figure, eclipsed by the head of the ticket. He might have been selected to placate a section or region and therefore had regional rather than national support. A vice president turned president could never lead his party, Tyler ruefully asserted. He was instead forced into the role of lackey, and if he refused to become “a piece of wax” molded as party leaders pleased, he could expect to suffer lasting opprobrium and indignities. “Has he long cherished opinions,” Tyler wrote, “which stand in the way of party measures, whether these measures be good or bad, wise or the opposite, they must be surrendered. Honor, conscience, every thing esteemed sacred among men, must be yielded, or the thunders break over his head, and threaten annihilation.” With this statement Tyler publicly avowed his fealty to the southern honor code and his desire to remain true to his republican conception of society. During the extra session the Whigs had tried to force Tyler to abandon his cherished beliefs—republicanism and honor. He had held firm, but the unique circumstances of his ascension left his administration vulnerable to “factions,” a term describing corrupt interest groups.38 The stage was set in February for another Tyler confrontation with the Whig-dominated national legislature. First, the Tyler administration learned through Daniel Webster’s contacts in the financial community that repeal of distribution was a necessary complement to tariff reform and a general rehabilitation of the government’s fiscal health. In the current financial atmosphere, roiled by state defaults and the national government’s embarrassing shortfalls, capitalists in Europe and the United States were not inclined to grant loans to the U.S. government unless a regular and reliable revenue stream was pledged to interest payments. Absent tariff receipts, falling dramatically because of reduced duty levels and the effects of the ongoing depression, the government had only one other source of revenue—land sales. For the government to receive a loan, without which its operations would grind to a halt, distribution had to be surrendered and the funds publicly directed to interest payments on the loan, in effect pledged as security. Only that commitment would instill confidence in jittery financiers.39 On Tuesday, February 15, 1842, Henry Clay addressed the Senate and laid out the Whig program for economic revival, in eleven resolutions, though not all Whigs agreed with every element. His second resolution declared that tariff rates had to break the 20-percent level to adequately fund the government, a fact admitted by the Tyler administration. The fifth resolution called for continued distribution of land-sales proceeds

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whatever the duty levels. Clay and his Whig colleagues wanted both a higher tariff and distribution and had thrown down the gauntlet.40 In his December message, Tyler had conceded the necessity of duty levels over 20 percent, and the Washington Madisonian acknowledged this in editorials during the new year. Input from the financial community confirmed the correctness of Tyler’s judgment, however ambiguously couched in the annual message. Now, the Richmond Enquirer reminded the public of Tyler’s 1839 comments on distribution while a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. At that time Tyler both endorsed distribution and explicitly affirmed the Compromise of 1833; the Enquirer said distribution legislation could not have passed then without a rider declaring the compromise “sacred” and “inviolable,” thus suggesting that if Tyler endorsed Clay’s formula of a higher tariff and continued distribution, he would be a hypocrite or worse. Editorials of this ilk gave Tyler little room to maneuver and again raised the specter of damage to his personal honor if he appeared to act in contradiction to earlier statements. The government’s fiscal calamity required that Tyler repudiate the compromise he had helped construct and to which he had pledged fealty, an act that seemed to define “inconsistency,” which placed honor at risk. To endure that personal blow was difficult enough for him to stomach; to accept the Whig objective of retaining distribution as well was completely beyond the possible, not to mention bad policy that could make it impossible for the government to negotiate a loan.41 The Madisonian tried to soften the blow from Tyler’s repudiation of the compromise and embrace of a higher tariff by suggesting that the American system had caused the ongoing economic malaise. Clay’s protective tariff was an attempt to prematurely leap into an industrial age, to speed past the agrarian idyll that nurtured a free republic. Social engineering of this sort produced unintended consequences. In this case the tariff generated a surfeit of revenue that was passed down to the states, which in turn engaged in an orgy of spending that prompted the crash and subsequent depression. Clay was to blame for the whole mess, the Madisonian concluded, and Tyler had of necessity been forced to abandon his commitment to the compromise. The blame-Clay argument sought to shift criticism away from Tyler and back at Henry Clay and the American system as the twin authors of America’s current misfortune.42 Clay’s resolutions in favor of a higher tariff and the retention of distribution ran smack into Tyler’s need to demonstrate some degree of consistency for the sake of personal honor while accepting higher tariff rates. How could Clay and the Whigs expect him to abandon the distribution suspension proviso he had insisted on the previous year as the price for his signature on the distribution bill while he was being forced to abandon what was once described as a “sacred” compromise? The

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president was also told that keeping the distribution funds was crucial to securing a loan. To act as Clay and the Whigs wished was too great a leap. In early March, Treasury Secretary Walter Forward warned that the deficit for the first quarter would be $3.25 million, a horrific figure. Tyler was sufficiently alarmed over Forward’s dire report and months of congressional inactivity to send a message to the House of Representatives to give added weight and a sense of urgency to the government’s predicament. In the message Tyler raised the war specter, pointing out that the foreign relations of the United States were in an “unsettled” state and stressing Congress’s obligation to fund the country’s defenses. Britain was the obvious enemy, and the secretary of the navy was building up naval forces. The president insisted that he was remedying the neglect of the Van Buren years, an argument hotly contested by the Democratic Washington Globe. Tyler expected that a revision of the tariff would prevent a recurrence of the embarrassing shortfalls but acknowledged that the tariff debate would be time consuming. Meanwhile, the government had to operate, and to operate it needed money. Tyler begged the Congress to act on Forward’s proposals. “The Government,” declared the New York Herald, “must have money, or stand as still as a broken German clock.” In response to this needling from both president and press, the House Ways and Means Committee began some movement on financial issues.43 Congress, though, was in little mood for presidential lectures and not inclined to rush to accommodate Tyler. Congressional committees had begun harassing the administration with requests for documents related to matters within their jurisdiction. For example, the House on March 16 passed a resolution calling on the president to submit a list of all members of the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Congresses who had applied for an executive appointment. The call was an example of the continued relevance of republican ideology in American politics, harkening back to eighteenth-century republican criticism of the crown’s use of patronage to subvert Parliament’s independence. It was also simple harassment and probably a Whig effort to reveal personal letters embarrassing to the administration. The Washington Madisonian suggested that Congress was trying to force Tyler into the role of “Boswell” to White House visitors; a gentleman did not divulge personal conversations, the latter point a veiled jab at Congressman John Minor Botts, who had revealed personal conversations with Abel Upshur that winter in an attempt to smear Upshur as a disunionist. Tyler eventually refused to comply with the request, arguing that these conversations were of an unofficial character.44 Harsh words were still directed at the president in floor speeches. Edward Stanly of North Carolina assailed Tyler in a March 17 speech, suggesting that the president was a “traitor” to the Whig party. Stanly had attempted to act as a peacemaker between Tyler and the Whigs at the close

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of the extra session; such a cutting rhetorical blast, while characteristic of Stanly, was, coming from a man who had once counseled understanding and conciliation with the president, a testament to the deterioration of relations between Tyler and Congress. The Madisonian responded to Stanly, probably because of the loaded terms used, and said that Tyler’s political character, no different than his personal character, was above reproach. Whigs opposed every administration measure, said the New York Herald, and Tyler was subject to the worst assaults since Cain killed Abel.45 When the House was not preoccupied with harassing the administration, it was roiled by renewed abolitionist agitation. Joshua Giddings, an Ohio Whig congressman, presented a petition calling for a division of the nation into slave- and free-state halves, duplicating the feat that landed Adams into trouble. Giddings’s resolutions inflamed southerners again, but he lacked the stature that protected former president Adams. Giddings was censured by the House, and he resigned. “Heartburnings will become fiercer between Slave States and Free States,” declared the New York Herald. Giddings’s constituents in Ohio’s Sixteenth Congressional District subsequently reelected him to return to the House and vex southerners.46 Amid the recurring disorder, Democrats chortled at their good fortune. The New York Herald’s Washington correspondent wrote that Democrats would escape blame for the coming crackup of the government and could ride in as saviors of the country. They had the luxury of standing on their principles, while Tyler was obligated to bow to the exigencies of the revenue situation and the Whigs moved seemingly blindly forward like automatons, heedless of the prospects of another political train wreck. Democrats continued to decry distribution, and a number of state legislatures passed resolutions refusing to accept the funds, including the Virginia Senate in March, 1842. While Democrats also rejected a protectionist tariff, an intraparty split was nevertheless in the offing for them as well.47 Two weeks had passed since Tyler’s March 8 call for congressional action. The New York Herald was in a panic that war was imminent between the United States and Britain under the most inauspicious circumstances, with the Congress idle and the Treasury empty. “The country is disgraced every day, by the bad feeling and worse action of the two Houses,” the Herald lamented. Always prescient, it declared Tyler was considering sending a message to Congress recommending the end of distribution and a new tariff as necessary measures to place the government in a financial condition capable of meeting the British menace. The Whig National Intelligencer was impatient as well for congressional action, noting that the session had reached its fourth month without acting on any important issue.48 Congress continued to plod along, so Tyler believed the moment had arrived to make his position clear in an unambiguous manner on the

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distribution issue. Whigs sought to tie a repeal of the suspension proviso to the tariff bill—they would then possess both of the legislative wishes they desired, a higher tariff and continued distribution. As the Richmond Enquirer made plain, agreeing to jettison the Compromise Act and to embrace the repeal of the distribution suspension proviso, just passed the previous September, was too much for John Tyler. It would be seen as the epitome of political expediency and viewed by southerners as a truckling under to northern interests. Perhaps the most important disqualifier was Tyler’s 1839 support for a rider to the distribution bill declaring the compromise “sacred.” Although rates had to climb regardless of the dispensation of the land-sales funds, to go back on the suspension of land moneys when duties rose above 20 percent would be to endorse an act that southerners were bound to regard as a guarantee of higher tariff rates. Tyler would also be charged with inconsistency and expediency, a threat to personal honor. Tyler sent Congress another missive on March 25, 1842, this time addressing it to both House and Senate. Tyler complained that the dire state of the Treasury obligated another wakeup call from him to the Congress. In republican tones Tyler pronounced himself a disinterested and objective observer, someone who could be relied upon to examine the problem dispassionately because the debt had been run up by previous administrations. Things were so bad, Tyler wrote, that the two warring political parties had great incentives to work together.49 The president reviewed the Treasury’s needs and Congress’s attempts to meet them. Secretary Forward predicted an 1842 deficit of $14 million. So far Congress had issued $5 million in Treasury notes. A loan bill had recently sprung up in the House, but Tyler said that even with that money, the deficit would still be $2.5 million. Ideally, he continued, the government ought to have, for emergencies, a budgeted surplus of $2.5 million. With trade and business in a funk and the revenue laws inadequate, he proclaimed the time had come to enact major reform rather than rely on expedients. As president, he was constitutionally obligated to do something. Duties for some items, Tyler wrote, would have to rise above the 20-percent level. This was necessary to match the government’s expenses, to provide incidental protection for the sake of manufacturing interests, and to properly fund the American military establishment.50 Tyler then turned to the crux of his note: distribution. The September act mandated suspension when duties climbed above 20 percent; at that time this seemed unlikely to ever happen, and Tyler regretted that some states were counting on the funds to help offset their own deficits. But the most important thing now, the president averred, was the good credit of the national government. Restoring it would have as positive an effect on state credit as would the continued disbursements of land-sales funds.

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American credit was at a worldwide low. State banks were bankrupt and had run up millions in foreign debt during the 1830s, and states had taken to repudiating it. The country could not be placed in the situation of having to beg for loans and routinely receive bad terms and a poor credit rating. The government needed about fifteen million dollars to fund the Treasury until a new tariff went into effect, so Tyler tasked Congress to direct the land fund to pay interest on a loan to cover the shortfall, which he hoped would give investors confidence and garner the government a lower interest rate. Any funds left over after interest payments would be earmarked to retire principal. Tyler concluded by asserting that healing the federal government’s fiscal wounds was imperative to a broader economic revival in the nation at large. No meaningful reform at the state level was possible until the national government had its house in order. He placed the issue squarely on Congress. If the nation’s deficit ballooned, credit rating fell, and defenses weakened, the finger of blame pointed at the Whig Congress. The National Intelligencer applauded Tyler’s effort to spur legislators to action and noted that it appeared to have worked, for the House planned to take up the loan bill in the near future. But the paper was not happy that Tyler was abandoning distribution, which it characterized as a “vital measure of Whig policy” and “almost the only fruit of the political revolution” that led to the Whig majority. The Democratic Washington Globe praised Tyler for seeking the repeal of distribution and described the message as a “declaration of independence.” The New York Herald also saluted the March 25 message as an important first step toward the restoration of the national credit. As for the congressional response, the Herald expected the worst. “We anticipate nothing but violence, uproar, opposition, brutal attack, and every species of delay.—The present Congress was elected under the effects of hard cider, hard singing, hard drinking, and hard things of all kinds. Their character and conduct correspond with their origin.”51 The Washington Madisonian naturally defended Tyler, whose message exhibited “manliness” and “clearness.” The president’s paper was at pains to explain that he supported distributing the funds to the states, recognizing the awful need, but because of the unique domestic and foreign crises, distribution would have to be suspended. The Madisonian stressed that “suspend” was the proper verb to characterize Tyler’s actions, not “repeal,” which was the choice of the opposition papers, the Globe and the Intelligencer. Unique circumstances had forced the president to backtrack on distribution and the tariff, and that rare phenomenon was not the responsibility of John Tyler. The responsibility for the action Tyler proposed rested with the Whig House of Representatives, the Madisonian explained, as that body had failed to enact Tyler’s Exchequer, the

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administration’s all-purpose panacea for the economy, and the delay allowed the nation to slip into such financial disarray that the land proceeds had to be pledged so the government could secure a loan. As for the tariff and discarding the Compromise of 1833, now made explicit, the Madisonian said national-bank zealots who dug in their heals rather than adopt a reasonable alternative that did not wreck the Constitution—that is, the Exchequer—could take credit for that once sacred act’s demise.52 In essence, the Madisonian and Tyler’s argument was that the president was forced by dire economic and financial chaos—the direct consequences of the Whig Congress’s, particularly the House’s, excessive partisanship and general irresponsibility, placing party before the country—to abandon the compromise and distribution. Two objectives were accomplished by advancing this argument. First, in order for Tyler to avoid the stigma of inconsistency and the potential hazard to personal honor, it was important to demonstrate the overwhelming and compelling necessity that compelled the discarding of a sacred agreement. Second, Tyler was framing the debate in such a manner that Congress’s inactivity would be highlighted to shift attention away from his own rejection of the national bank the previous session. Congress, not Tyler, was responsible for the continuing depression. Pro-Tyler newspapers reinforced this message by carrying accounts of “Indignation Meetings” and angry petitions that deplored congressional obstructionism. The debate was framed in such a clear and convincing manner that the opprobrium for inaction fell on the Whig Congress; the House had little choice but to move on the loan bill, which cleared Congress and was signed by Tyler in mid-April. Terms of the original loan, passed in 1841, were made more generous to sweeten its attractiveness to investors, and an additional five million dollars was tacked to the bill. Efforts by Tyler supporters in the House to direct landsales funds to the loan’s interest payments failed, though; Whigs were not ready to give up distribution. The formidable task of adjusting the tariff remained to be settled, and with it a permanent solution to the revenue problem.53 Six days after Tyler’s message of March 25, Henry Clay delivered a farewell address to the Senate and officially retired, turning the seat over to John J. Crittenden, who had been waiting for weeks for Clay to step down. Within days, a convention of North Carolina Whigs met in Raleigh and nominated Clay for president, passing the obligatory resolutions condemning Tyler and praising the Harrison cabinet for resigning. Previously Clay had declined an invitation to attend the convention through an inflammatory letter that was published in the National Intelligencer. In that missive Clay accused Tyler of courting the Whigs’ political foes, who flattered Tyler while thinking him a fool, and of using executive patronage to

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construct a third party. As Clay left Washington for the campaign trail, the letter constituted a nasty departing swipe at Tyler.54 Clay’s North Carolina letter and the convention’s open declaration of Clay’s candidacy in 1844 affected Tyler as a red flag does a bull. Tyler was enraged; he seems to have personalized the political feud, ironically enough in a fashion analogous to Andrew Jackson’s reaction to the Bank War, which Jackson interpreted as a duel between himself and Nicholas Biddle. Perhaps this hot-tempered response was another manifestation of the southern honor code’s influence on Tyler’s personality. Invited to attend a ball given in Clay’s honor, Tyler refused, purportedly giving as reason that Clay had insulted him. The Washington Madisonian subsequently compared the ball and Clay to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, Clay basking in luxury while the nation suffered as Napoleon had returned to France in comfort even as the French soldiery trudged back through the Russian winter. “The indiscreet letter of Mr. Clay to the North Carolinians has contributed to widen the breach between the whigs in Congress and the President, and it is now both fatal and final,” intoned the New York Herald.55 Months of political acrimony and recriminations followed as Tyler, Whigs, and Democrats savaged each other in their respective papers and battled in the Congress, engaging in what one historian described as a “three-cornered struggle.” It would be reasonable to expect that Clay’s resignation, which removed Tyler’s fiercest political foe and titular leader of the Whigs from the Senate, would enhance the probability of cooperation between the administration and Congress. Unfortunately, Clay’s departure changed nothing; many Whigs were still very angry with Tyler, and moderate Whigs inclined to work with the administration were reluctant to break party loyalty or defy the leadership. Clay’s presence hovered over the assembly like a dark cloud, hindering any rapprochement, and regular letters arrived from Clay’s Ashland estate in Lexington, Kentucky, ordering that there be no concessions, no retreat on distribution. Clay believed that surrendering key Whig measures like distribution would frustrate continued Whig successes. The New York Herald concluded that the party was “blindly fanatical” in adhering to distribution.56 Encouraged by their self-exiled warlord, the Whigs waged political trench warfare against the Tyler administration, grasping the convenient cudgels provided a majority in control of the appropriation committees. “At no period since the commencement of the extra session has the breach between the Clay whigs in Congress and President Tyler been as wide at the present time. It is a gulf, broad, deep, and impassible,” reported the Herald. The Senate regularly rejected Tyler nominees, and various House committees harassed the administration with requests for documents, hoping to find a nugget of embarrassing material to make

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public. Whigs soon began withholding funds from the White House budget, a strategy trumpeted in republican terms as a “withholding of supplies” from a tyrant, drawing an analogy with the ancient tactic of English Parliaments against the monarchy.57 Another irritant was the ongoing campaigning for presidential nominations in both parties. Martin Van Buren was touring the South, touching political bases and meeting with local Democratic leaders. He stopped in Lexington, Kentucky, and greeted his rival Henry Clay, which prompted darkly worded warnings in the Washington Madisonian about Whig and Democratic collusion against Tyler, the two erstwhile, and perhaps future, rivals supposedly concocting a joint scheme to “head” Tyler. Calhoun was active too. Tyler and his loyalists engaged in the perhaps quixotic pursuit of forming a third party. There were meetings of a socalled patriot party in New York City, comprising self-described moderates who supported Tyler. The New York Herald actively encouraged a Tyler candidacy as an essential element of an ongoing “moral revolution.” It promoted Tyler as a nonlineal descendant of George Washington; he governed without reference to party, as Washington had done, and was thus a political kinsman of the virtuous Founder. Tyler was above party, a republican patriot who placed honor and the good of the nation above the dictates of the corrupt factions that controlled party councils and dictated party acts. The Herald’s argument was republican in tone and suggested that the United States, under the leadership of the upright Tyler, could return to a simpler, less corrupt age unsullied by the frantic political changes of the Jackson era, with its active campaigning, manhood suffrage, and spoils system.58 Amid rampaging congressional committees, abolitionists, and thinly disguised presidential campaigning, June arrived, and with it the countdown to the final reduction of the tariff to a uniform 20 percent, scheduled to occur at the end of the month, a level that Tyler conceded was inadequate to the government’s needs. He decided that personal honor and consistency dictated his course. Given his interpretation of his record, Tyler could not accept a continuance of distribution and high tariff rates, which would be a violation of the 1841 Land Act (as noted above). The president had specifically endorsed retaining the suspension provision in his March 25 message to Congress. The Richmond Enquirer, as it had in February