Presidency of John Tyler
| The Tyler Cabinet | ||
|---|---|---|
| Office | Name | Term |
| President | John Tyler | 1841–1845 |
| Vice President | None | 1841–1845 |
| Secretary of State | Daniel Webster (W) | 1841–1843 |
| Abel P. Upshur (W) | 1843–1844 | |
| John C. Calhoun (D) | 1844–1845 | |
| Secretary of Treasury | Thomas Ewing, Sr. (W) | 1841 |
| Walter Forward (W) | 1841–1843 | |
| John C. Spencer (W) | 1843–1844 | |
| George M. Bibb (D) | 1844–1845 | |
| Secretary of War | John Bell (W) | 1841 |
| John C. Spencer (W) | 1841–1843 | |
| James M. Porter (W) | 1843–1844 | |
| William Wilkins (D) | 1844–1845 | |
| Attorney General | John J. Crittenden (W) | 1841 |
| Hugh S. Legaré (D) | 1841–1843 | |
| John Nelson (W) | 1843–1845 | |
| Postmaster General | Francis Granger (W) | 1841 |
| Charles A. Wickliffe (W) | 1841–1845 | |
| Secretary of the Navy | George E. Badger (W) | 1841 |
| Abel P. Upshur (W) | 1841–1843 | |
| David Henshaw (D) | 1843–1844 | |
| Thomas W. Gilmer (D) | 1844 | |
| John Y. Mason (D) | 1844–1845 | |
| Successful judicial appointments | ||
|---|---|---|
| Court | Name | Term |
| U.S.S.C. | Samuel Nelson | 1845–1872 |
| D.Mass. | Peleg Sprague | 1841–1865 |
| E.D.Pa. | Archibald Randall | 1842–1846 |
| D.Vt. | Samuel Prentiss | 1842–1857 |
|
E.D.La. W.D.La. |
Theodore H. McCaleb | 1841–1861 |
| D. Ind. | Elisha M. Huntington | 1842–1862 |
| E.D.Va. | James D. Halyburton | 1844–1861 |
The presidency of John Tyler began on April 4, 1841, when John Tyler became President of the United States upon the death of President William Henry Harrison, and ended on March 4, 1845. He had been Vice President of the United States for only 31 days when he assumed the presidency. The tenth United States president, he was the first to succeed to the office intra-term without being elected to it. To forestall constitutional uncertainty, Tyler took the presidential oath of office on April 6, moved into the White House, and assumed full presidential powers, a precedent that would govern future extraordinary successions and eventually become codified in the Twenty-fifth Amendment. At the age of fifty-one, he was the youngest person to hold the office to that date.
Although nominated for the vice presidency on the Whig Party ticket, Tyler was a Whig in name only. A strict constructionist, he found much of the Whig platform unconstitutional, and vetoed several of his party's bills. Believing that the president should set policy instead of deferring to Congress, he attempted to bypass the Whig establishment, most notably Kentucky Senator Henry Clay. Most of Tyler's Cabinet resigned soon into his term, and the Whigs, dubbing him His Accidency, expelled him from the party. Congress and the president became entrenched in a war of wills. A resolution calling for his impeachment was introduced in the House. However, it was later defeated. Though Tyler was not the first president to veto bills, he was the first to see his veto overridden by Congress.
Tyler had more success in international affairs, and his administration had two notable foreign-policy achievements: the Webster–Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain and the Treaty of Wanghia with Qing China. He also extended the principles of the Monroe Doctrine to Hawaii, warned the British to stay away from the Hawaiian Islands, and began the process that would eventually bring about their annexation by the United States. During his last two years in office Tyler pressed for the annexation of Texas as a slave state, and injected the issue into the 1844 presidential election, which was won by Democrat James K. Polk. On March 1, 1845, three days before turning the presidency over to Polk, Tyler signed the Texas annexation bill into law. (Texas became the 28th state in the Union on December 29, 1845.)
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