It’s guest blog time! Today we’re welcoming one of my dear friends and fellow shenaniganizers (and history nerd!) Katie Kennedy, who courageously agreed to share some of her current historical research with us, even though flaming bags of doggie doo were involved. She is the author of The Constitution Decoded (Workman) and a forthcoming
collective biography of the presidents, The Presidents Decoded (Workman, January
2023), both for MG/YA readers. She has also written two young adult novels, Learning
to Swear in America and What Goes Up.
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I’m writing a collective biography of U.S. presidents for middle grade
and YA readers, but I suspect that plenty of teachers and parents will be
sneaking peeks as well. It’s meant as a companion to a plain-language
explanation of the Constitution I wrote a couple of years ago. Writing the book
has led me to rank the presidents idiosyncratically: Who would I take swimsuit
shopping with me? (Not plain-spoken Harry Truman.) Who would be a good
companion on a desert island? (John Kennedy, who once escaped from one.) Who
would make me homicidal fastest if I were stuck in an elevator with him? Why,
John Tyler, of course. When people list the presidents, they often forget Tyler
(1790-1862), which is a little strange because in his day he had the popularity
of a flaming bag of doggie doo. Seems like a guy we’d remember.
When he was in Congress, Tyler opposed the Missouri Compromise (1820), which
outlawed slavery above Missouri’s southern border. Tyler objected because he thought
slavery should be allowed everywhere. A decade later, South Carolina tried to
secede; Tyler was the only U.S. Senator to oppose the Force Bill, which gave President
Andrew Jackson the power to enforce a federal law if a state refused to
recognize it. Jackson was desperately trying to hold the country together and
he managed to do it—but he sure didn’t get any help from John Tyler.
Tyler was William Henry Harrison’s running mate in the 1840 presidential
election. Harrison died a month after taking office and Tyler became the third
president in five weeks. (The first was Martin Van Buren, who served before
Harrison.)
Tyler was a strict constructionist who thought the Constitution granted
no power it didn’t explicitly list—that is, until Harrison died, at which point
he declared himself to be the actual, not acting, president, although the
Constitution didn’t say that the vice president became president if the
executive died in office. (The Twenty-Fifth Amendment clarified the point—in
1967.) Most members of Congress thought he wasn’t a real president, but he
returned letters addressed to “Acting President” unopened and his wife had the
band play “Hail to the Chief” when he arrived at official functions, starting that
tradition.
Tyler was a Whig but he vetoed Whig bills. He belonged to the party not
because he agreed with its platform, but because he disliked Andrew Jackson’s
Democratic party. His entire cabinet resigned (except for Secretary of State
Daniel Webster, who was negotiating an important treaty). People referred to
Tyler as “His Accidency” and Whigs kicked him out of the party—while he was the
sitting president. It was Tyler who refused to return the Amistad
defendants to Africa after their victory in the Supreme Court, making it
necessary to raise private funds. Tyler was also the first president to have
articles of impeachment drawn up against him—which were filed by a
representative from his home state of Virginia. Congress did not go forward
with the impeachment, however.
Tyler did find someone who liked him. Two years after his first wife,
Letitia, became the first First Lady to die in the White House, he married
Julia Gardiner. Tyler had fifteen children, the most of any president.
When the Civil War began Tyler voted for Virginia’s secession and was
elected to the Confederate Congress, making him the only president who clearly
committed treason after leaving office. He died in 1862, before the war ended,
and was never tried.
How bad was Tyler? When the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported his
death it wrote, “His beautiful residence has been occupied by Union soldiers,
his magnificent State has been ravaged by war, and the country so prosperous
when he administered its affairs, is rent with civil war. John Tyler did
perhaps as little as any man to prevent these evils.” Ouch.
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Thanks, Katie! Some day we'll have you back to discuss your favorite presidents to go fishing in Alaska and to go out for ice cream with. 😉
You can find Katie’s The Constitution Decoded (and her other books as well) at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Kobo, or at your local independent bookseller.
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