John Tyler: Unexpected

01VOA Learning English presents America's Presidents.

02Today we are talking about a vice president.

03John Tyler was William Henry Harrison's partner on the ticket in the 1840 election.

04He was the Tyler of the campaign slogan, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.

05But only one month into his term as president, Harrison unexpectedly died.

06He was the first U.S.

07president to die in office.

08Today, Americans accept that when that happens, the vice president becomes the president.

09But in 1841, no one really knew what to do.

10So people turned to the Constitution.

11It said, If the president is removed from office, or if he dies, resigns, or is not able to perform his duties, his power and responsibility is given to the vice president.

12But the meaning of those words was unclear.

13Did the vice president really become the president?

14Or did the vice president just act like the president?

15The Constitution may not have been clear, but John Tyler was.

16He claimed that, after Harrison's death, he really was the president.

17Tyler made sure he was quickly sworn in.

18He answered only to the title president.

19He even refused to open letters that were sent to acting President Tyler.

20Eventually, Americans accepted John Tyler was the nation's tenth president.

21But some Americans were not happy about that fact.

22During his presidency, all but one of Tyler's cabinet advisors resigned, and members of his own party tried to impeach him.

23Tyler was from the southern state of Virginia, home to five earlier U.S.

24presidents.

25Like many of the leaders before him, he was a lawyer from an upper-class family who owned slaves.

26He strongly supported the power of the states against the federal government, expansion of slavery, and rule by a small, elite group.

27But the United States was starting to change.

28For example, President John Quincy Adams had proposed creating a national system of roads.

29The Missouri Compromise of 1820 limited slavery in new states in the Northwest.

30And in the 1830s, many white men who did not own property earned the right to vote.

31In other words, the U.S.

32was becoming more national, abolitionist, and equal.

33Tyler resisted these changes.

34He fought against them as a member of the U.S.

35House of Representatives, a governor of Virginia, and a senator.

36His fight reached a crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson.

37The two men belonged to the same party, the Democratic Party.

38However, Tyler hated Jackson's populist policies and use of presidential powers against the states.

39In the middle of the 1830s, Tyler joined with several other political leaders to create a new anti-Jackson party.

40They were called the Whigs.

41The New Whig Party badly wanted to win the 1840 presidential election against Jackson's right-hand man, Martin Van Buren.

42They proposed John Tyler as the party's vice presidential candidate because they hoped he would appeal to Southern voters.

43The Whigs succeeded.

44Tyler and Harrison won the election.

45The new party expected that they would be able to achieve many of their policy goals.

46But then Harrison died, and Tyler unexpectedly became president.

47Tyler kept Harrison's cabinet of top advisors, but he did not accept their advice.

48Whig lawmakers presented bill after bill to Tyler, but he failed to support the measures.

49He believed they gave too much power to the federal government over the states.

50In anger, all but one of Tyler's cabinet members resigned.

51Then Whig leaders officially declared that Tyler was no longer part of their group.

52The following year, they even moved to impeach him.

53He became known as a president without a party.

54Tyler was able to achieve one major political act, however.

55Three days before he left office, he signed the law that made Texas a state.

56Perhaps wisely, Tyler withdrew from the next presidential election.

57He eventually withdrew even his support for the federal government.

58He became a leader in the movement for Southern succession.

59In other words, he believed the Southern states had the right to separate from the North and leave the Union.

60In time, the separation between the South and North would lead to the Civil War.

61Tyler was an unusual president.

62He took office in an unusual way, and he took the unusual step of vetoing legislative action proposed by his own party.

63His family life has other unusual details.

64Tyler was the first president to get married while in office.

65He was the president with the most children.

66And two of his grandchildren remained alive until well into the 21st century.

67In 1844, Tyler married Julia Gardner.

68She was his second wife.

69His first wife, Letitia, had died two years earlier.

70John and Letitia Tyler had eight children together.

71Since Julia Gardner Tyler was 24 years old, 30 years younger than her new husband, the two had plenty of time to have another seven children.

72And because one of their sons had children in the 1920s, two of Tyler's grandchildren are still alive as of early 2017.

73Tyler is not remembered as a good president.

74But he is remembered for establishing a precedent, a way of doing something that other people have followed.

75The Tyler precedent permitted the peaceful transfer of power from president to vice president in 1841.

76And it eased the transition after other presidents have died since then.

77In 1967, the Constitution was even changed to clarify what Tyler had claimed all along.

78When the president dies, the vice president becomes the new chief executive.

79I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.

80I'm Kelly.

81I'm Kelly.

82I'm Kelly.