At 11:00 a.m. on March 4, 1841, the Senate galleries were packed to capacity for hours. John Tyler entered the room accompanied by the justices of the Supreme Court and the diplomatic corps. The president pro tempore of the Senate, William R. King, then swore in Tyler as vice president, after which Tyler offered a three-minute address. Shortly after noon, the party rose from the Senate and moved to the Capitol’s east portico, where a crowd of fifty thousand waited to witness the oath taking of President Harrison. Determined to demonstrate his virility, Harrison did not wear a hat or an overcoat as Chief Justice Roger B. Taney administered the oath of office.
Webster had worked hard to edit Harrison’s ninety-minute, 8,445 word inaugural speech, given in a snowstorm on March 4, 1841, the longest inaugural speech on record. The address was filled with Roman references and Greek philosophies. Harrison set out to present a “summary of the principles” that would govern him in the discharge of his duties. One of his principles was that there was great danger in the “accumulation” of power by any of the branches of government, and, specifically, he believed that the president should be limited to only one term. Until the Constitution could be so amended, Harrison said, he would renew the “pledge heretofore given that under no circumstances will I consent to serve a second term.”
Harrison caught a cold, and it turned into pneumonia, which on March 27, the physicians deemed “not dangerous.”[55] The doctors bled him and gave him a regimen of laudanum and brandy, and other medical care. On April 1, Webster sent word to Tyler at his plantation in Virginia that Harrison was gravely ill. It would have been unseemly for Tyler to rush to Harrison’s bedside in anticipation of succeeding to the highest office.[56] Harrison suffered a relapse, and died early on April 4. He was sixty-eight years old. Webster sent his son, Fletcher,[57] and the Senate assistant doorkeeper, Robert Beale, to Tyler to report Harrison’s death. Tyler was asleep when Fletcher Webster and Beale arrived on horseback at one o’clock in the morning.[58] After sunrise, Tyler journeyed by horseback and boat to get back to Washington at 4:00 a.m. the following day.[59]
President Harrison on his deathbed, April 1841. Secretary of State Webster is standing, the second figure on the left. Postmaster General Francis Granger is standing in the doorway.
Former president John Quincy Adams worried for the nation, because he thought so little of John Tyler:
Tyler is a political sectarian, of the slave-driving, Virginian, Jeffersonian school, . . . with all the interests and passions and vices of slavery rooted in his moral and political constitution—with talents not above mediocrity, and a spirit incapable of expansion to the dimensions of the station upon which he has been cast by the hand of Providence, unseen through the apparent agency of chance. No one ever thought of his being placed in the executive chair.[60]
Despite Adams’s misgivings, John Tyler came with an impressive résumé of deep governmental experience: he had served in both houses of his state legislature, in both the US House and US Senate, and as governor of his state.
Until Amendment XXV to the Constitution in 1967, the Constitution provided in Article II, Section 1:
In the case of the removal of the President from Office or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President.
It was unclear, based on only the text of that section, whether it was necessary or appropriate for a vice president to be considered president in order to execute the powers and duties of the president. Tyler, not surprisingly, took the position that his vice presidential oath covered the possibility of having to take over as chief executive, and so there was no need for him to take a separate presidential oath of office. Most of the cabinet and the informed public disagreed, and so Tyler yielded and decided to take the presidential oath.
On April 6, John Tyler took the oath of office, administered by William Cranch, the chief judge of the US Circuit Court. The event took place at Brown’s Indian Queen Hotel ten blocks from the White House.[61] Harrison’s body lay in state in the East Room of the White House in a coffin with a glass lid that allowed mourners to see the face of a president they barely knew.[62] In addition to the new president, the cabinet, members of Congress, and the diplomatic corps were in attendance, along with seventy-three-year-old John Quincy Adams—the former president and now congressman from Massachusetts. While Adams had thought little of President Harrison, he thought far less of the new President Tyler, whom he thought was “a political sectarian, of the slave-driving, Virginian, Jeffersonian school, principled against all improvement”; Adams even thought that Tyler should refer to himself as “Acting President.”[63]
John Tyler, the tenth president of the United States.
On April 7, 1841, Harrison’s funeral procession led from the White House, with his horse, Whitey, trotting down the street riderless. Solomon Northup, a free black man who lived in Saratoga, New York, with his wife, Anne, and three children, was in Washington that day with two new friends. He wrote in his autobiography—which formed the basis for the film Twelve Years a Slave, the 2014 Oscar winner for best picture—his impressions of the funeral procession:
[T]here was a great pageant in Washington. The roar of cannon and the tolling of bells filled the air, while many houses were shrouded with crape, and the streets were black with people. As the day advanced, the procession made its appearance, coming slowly through the Avenue, carriage after carriage, in long succession, while thousands upon thousands followed on foot—all moving to the sound of melancholy music. They were bearing the dead body of Harrison to the grave.[64]
On April 9, two days after Harrison’s funeral, President Tyler issued a statement, which became known as “President Tyler’s Address,” and which was the functional equivalent of an inaugural address. In the foreign policy part of that address, and with the British-American tensions high, Tyler promised a policy that would do justice to all countries, while submitting to injustice from none. He also urged the creation of a stronger army and navy to ensure that “the honor of the country shall sustain no blemish.”
There was some uncertainty about Tyler’s exact status when President Harrison died. Some suggested that he should resign, but he stood firm, explaining: “My resignation would amount to a declaration to the world that our system of government has failed.”[65] But was he now the “acting” president until the next regular election? Did he have the full powers of the office? His detractors called him “His Accidency,” but he was determined to be fully in charge; he was not going to be a figurehead, a mere pawn of the Whig Party, and not a placeholder—he would not be merely a vice president acting as president. At Tyler’s first cabinet meeting as president, Webster informed him that, under Harrison, the cabinet made decisions on the basis of majority vote. Tyler flatly rejected that approach, and sought only the advice and counsel of the cabinet.
Tyler had been a Democrat. But, he defected for the Whig Party in 1834, because of his discomfort with Jackson’s pressures on South Carolina during the nullification crisis. Tyler was a longtime advocate of states’ rights,[66] and he did not support the basic principles of the Whig Party: high tariffs, federal funding for infrastructure, and a strong Congress. So, it was quite natural that the congressional Whigs were—at best—uneasy about the new President Tyler. Henry Clay, the powerful Whig senator, was especially embittered; Clay became one of Tyler’s enemies, especially during Tyler’s first year.
The first session of the 27th Congress convened on May 31, 1841, and that prompted Tyler’s first official message to Congress on June 1, 1841. Quite in contrast to his next message on December 7 (see appendix II), he stated that it was not “deemed necessary on this occasion” to have a detailed statement with respect to foreign relations, though he mentioned Secretary of State Webster’s correspondence with the British minister in Washington concerning the status of Alexander McLeod. Tyler also explained the need for territorial expansion, beginning with the desire to annex T
exas and to incorporate the Pacific coast.
On domestic economic matters, Tyler conflicted almost immediately with Clay and congressional Whigs, particularly over bank legislation. Many Whigs charged that he was a renegade Democrat without allegiance to Whig principles. While he was a senator (1831–1837), Treasury Secretary Thomas Ewing supported the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States. As secretary, Ewing proposed plans for a new depository for the federal government’s funds, including a new National Bank. The Senate’s Whig leader, Henry Clay, was highly supportive, but President Tyler vetoed the national bank bill for the second time in early September 1841. In the Congress, Clay and most Whigs saw Tyler’s veto as the last straw. Clay and the other leaders of the Whig party, in effect, expelled Tyler from the Whig Party. The pressure was on for the cabinet to walk out on Tyler.
Postmaster General Badger hosted a dinner on September 9 to which he invited the other members of Tyler’s cabinet. Each explained his intention to resign, except for Webster; one of the reasons for the dinner was to put pressure on Webster to join the mass exodus.[67] The afternoon of Saturday, September 11, 1841, was eventful. During a five-hour period, the treasury secretary (Ewing), the war secretary (Bell), the navy secretary (Badger), the postmaster general (Granger) and the attorney general (Crittenden)—all Whigs—separately walked in to President Tyler’s office.[68] Each handed Tyler a letter of resignation. The single exception was Daniel Webster. This mass exodus was part of a plan by Senator Henry Clay to force Tyler himself to resign.[69] Since there was no vice president, the president pro tempore of the Senate, New Jersey Senator Samuel L. Southard, a prominent Whig, would replace Tyler. Southard happened to be a protégé of Henry Clay.
Webster asked Tyler, in effect, whether the president wanted him to stay, or to go with the others. Tyler said it was up to Webster himself. Webster said: “If you leave it to me, Mr. President, I will stay where I am.” Tyler was moved by Webster’s decision to remain, and the two men shook hands on the arrangement. Tyler felt he needed Webster on his side for his ongoing battle with Clay-led Whigs in the Senate and also because Webster was working hard on resolving the growing conflicts with Great Britain.[70] Webster’s reasons for remaining were more complicated: though he was not a great admirer of Tyler’s abilities, he and Tyler concurred on foreign affairs issues, and if Webster left the cabinet, he felt it might force Tyler’s resignation and create turmoil in the nation and threaten peace. Webster also was proud of the steps he was taking to reduce tensions with Great Britain, and of course, he loved being secretary of state.[71]
Tyler quickly assembled five new cabinet members over the weekend, and by Monday, September 11, he submitted his nominations to the Senate, where they were quickly approved. The new cabinet reflected a geographic balance: Walter Forward of Pennsylvania, who had been Harrison’s comptroller of the currency, moved to treasury; John C. Spencer, a New York political figure, became secretary of war; Hugh S. Legare, a South Carolina lawyer and former House member, became attorney general; Charles A. Wickliffe, a former governor of Kentucky, and somewhat of an opponent of Clay, became postmaster general; and Virginia lawyer and states’ rights advocate, Abel P. Upshur, became secretary of the navy.
Attorney General Hugh Swinton Legare would play an important role in the months ahead as events relating to the Creole unfolded. He was born and grew up in South Carolina. His interests quickly tended toward the scholarly, particularly his interest in Roman and continental civil law, which he developed while studying at Edinburgh University in Scotland. He was also a politician. Shortly after he returned from Scotland in 1819, Swinton entered state politics, serving in the South Carolina legislature and then, in 1830, he became the state’s attorney general. He held that position at a critical time: the nullification crisis over which South Carolina threatened to secede. Legare spoke out in support of the Union. Perhaps as a reward, he was given a diplomatic post in Brussels. Upon his return to the United States, he was elected to the US House of Representatives, and then he practiced law. Finally, in 1840, he became a Whig and actively supported the Harrison/Tyler ticket.
Tyler was known as an Anglophobe. On Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1841, president-elect Harrison and vice president-elect Tyler attended the “twisting the lion’s tail” ceremony in Richmond, a ceremony involving a ceremonial sword honoring Virginia’s sons who had fought heroically against the British in the War of 1812. In contrast to Tyler, Webster was an Anglophile. He had served for years as US legal counsel for the premier British financial institution, the House of Baring. Barings helped finance the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and, indeed, Alexander Baring himself came to the United States to pick up the US government’s bonds, bring them to London, and then bring the cash to Paris. (Napoleon used the money to support his war against Britain!) In 1839, Webster and his wife, Caroline, toured the British Isles, a trip that was in part funded by Baring, and they stayed at Alexander Baring’s estate in England. Baring’s title was the 1st Baron Ashburton. Webster’s finances had been hurt in the Panic of 1837, because he had speculated heavily in western land, and he incurred personal debt from which he never recovered. But that did not restrict his propensity for living habitually beyond his means.
The Congress
The great French observer of early America, Alexis de Tocqueville, spent nine months in the United States in 1831, and then wrote his famous Democracy in America. In the second volume, published in 1840, he had the following comment about the US House of Representatives and the US Senate:
When you enter the House of Representatives in Washington, you feel yourself struck by the vulgar aspect of this great assembly. Often the eye seeks in vain for a celebrated man within it. Almost all its members are obscure persons. . . . They are, for the most part, village attorneys, those in trade, or even men belonging to the lowest class. . . .
Two steps away is the chamber of the Senate, whose narrow precincts enclose a large portion of the celebrities of America. . . . They are eloquent attorneys, distinguished generals, skillful magistrates, or well-known statesmen. All the words that issue from this assembly would do honor to the greatest parliamentary debates of Europe.[72]
Houses and buildings in Washington DC in 1839. In the background is the Capitol building with its original dome, completed in 1824. The current dome was constructed 1855-1866.
In the Congress, the issue of slavery, thought settled by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, was forcing its way to the surface. Abolitionist sentiment was growing stronger in the North and increasingly resented in the South. Hundreds of thousands of petitions bombarded the House demanding an end to slavery in the District of Coumbia and proposing other restrictions on slavery. On May 26, 1836, the Democratic-controlled House adopted (117–68) a “gag rule” that automatically tabled petitions relating to slavery. Congressman (and former president) John Quincy Adams had been a member of the House since 1831. He objected to the gag rule on constitutional grounds. The following year, at the next session of the same 24th Congress, the speaker ruled that all special rules adopted in the previous session had expired. So, on January 18, 1837, the House passed (129–69) once again, the same gag rule. Adams persisted in presenting slavery-related petitions, and so a South Carolina member moved to censure Adams—for being “guilty of a gross disrespect to this House” by attempting to introduce a petition from a slave. But the motion to censure easily failed.
The 25th Congress (March 1837 to March 1839) was again Democratic controlled. Near the beginning of the second session, on December 21, 1837, a new gag rule, expanded to cover slavery in the territories as well as the District and the states, passed in the House, 122 to 74. On December 11, 1838, during the third session of the 25th Congress, freshman Congressman Charles G. Atherton, a states’-rights Democrat from New Hampshire, introduced a gag Resolution whose logic was based on the principle that Congress had no constitutional power to legislate on slavery-related issues.
The Resolution provided:
Resolved, therefore, That all attempts, on the part of Congress, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia or the Territories, or to prohibit the removal of slaves from State to State, or to discriminate between the institutions of one portion of the country and another with the views aforesaid, are in violation of the Constitution, destructive of the fundamental principles on which the Union of these States rests, and beyond the jurisdiction of Congress; and that every petition, memorial, resolution, proposition, or paper, touching or relating in any way or to any extent whatever to slavery, as aforesaid, or the abolition thereof, shall, on the presentation thereof, without any further action thereon, be laid on the table without being debated, printed, or referred.
The “Atherton” Resolution passed the next day with a vote of 126–78. At that same session, a new member from Ohio, Joshua Reed Giddings, took his seat. He was elected as a Whig to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Congressman Whittlesey. Giddings, from Ashtabula in northeastern Ohio, was a strong opponent of slavery, and a very successful lawyer.
At the beginning of the 26th Congress (March 1839 to March 1841), a young Whig from Virginia, Henry A. Wise,[73] moved to change the formal Rules of the House to institute a permanent gag rule. On January 28, 1840, a permanent gag rule was adopted, which prohibited even the reception of slavery petitions (i.e., no longer a mere Resolution relevant to a session, but a permanent change in the House Rules):
Resolved, That no petition, memorial, resolution or other paper praying the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or any State or Territory, or the slave trade between the States of Territories . . . shall be received by this House.
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