^ JOHN TYLER Tenth President of the United States AN ADDRESS BY ARMISTEAD C. GORDON At the dedication, October 12, 1915, of the Monument erected by Congress in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Va. , in memory of President Tyler MONUMENT To PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER Erected by Congress IN HOLLYWOOD CEMETERY, RICHMOND, 1915 JOHN TYLER Tenth President of the United States AN ADDRESS BY ARMISTEAD C. GORDON At the dedication, October 12, 1915, of the Monument erected by Congress in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Va. , in memory of President Tyler HENRY MORE : Committee on Dedicatory Ceremonies HENRY C. STUART Governor of Virginia GEORGE AINSLIE Mayor of Richmond LIEUT.-COL. J. P. JERVEY United States Army WM. H. ADAMS President Board of Aldermen R. L. PETERS President Common Council BARTON H. GRUNDY Member Board of Aldermen FRED. H. POWELL Member of Common Council EDGAR B. ENGLISH Member of Common Council 864358 Ceremonies PARADE MAJ. W. McK. EVANS, Chief Marshal Capitol Square to Hollywood ORDER OF EXERCISES AT THE MONUMENT His EXCELLENCY HENRY C. STUART, Governor of Virginia, Presiding INVOCATION ............................ R T . REVEREND ROBERT A. GIBSON P. E. Bishop of Virginia REMARKS ............................... HON. JOHN LAMB Patron of the Bill in Congress for the erection of the monument Music America ... .................... COAST ARTILLERY BAND Fort Monroe, Va. HON. ARMISTEAD C. GORDON Music Auld Lang Syne ................ COAST ARTILLERY BAND Fort Monroe, Va. UNVEILING OF THE MONUMENT .......... MRS. PEARL TYLER ELLIS Only surviving daughter of President Tyler PRESIDENTIAL SALUTE ................... RICHMOND HOWITZERS Music The Star Spangled Banner ...... COAST ARTILLERY BAND Fort Monroe, Va. BENEDICTION ............................ R T . REVEREND COLLINS DENNY Bishop M. E. Church, South An Account of tW AbftBn-^f- tlit. ; ongress of the United States in Providing This Monument BY AN act approved March 4, 1911, Congress authorized the erection of a suitable monument over the grave of the late John Tyler, former President of the United States, in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Va., and, by an act approved August 24, 1912, an appropriation of $10,000 was made for the purpose, provided that no part of the amount so appropriated should be expended until the Secretary of War was satis fied of the existence of a responsible legal association for the care and maintenance of the monument, and provided further, that when the said monument was erected, the responsibility for the care and maintenance of the same should be with such association, and without expense to the United States. In pursuance of this law, the Hollywood Cemetery Com pany agreed to take charge of the Tyler lot in Hollywood Cemetery as soon as the monument it was proposed to have placed in the lot was com pleted, and to keep the lot in perpetual care, having full regard to its sightly and respectable appearance, as is done in all other lots in said cemetery that are under the perpetual care of said company, it being understood that the responsibility for the care and maintenance should be without expense to the United States. The Secretary of War, under date of November 26. 1912, directed the Chief of Engineers, United States Army, to select an officer of the corps of engineers, United States Army, to take charge of the construction of the monument, the advertising for bids and designs, conducting all neces sary correspondence regarding design of monument and the inscriptions, and the disbursing of the appropriation made by the sundry civil act ap proved August 24, 1912, for the construction of the monument. In accordance with the orders of the Secretary of War, the Chief of Engineers, United States Army, under date of December 10, 1912, desig nated the district engineer officer at Norfolk, Va., to carry out the instruc tions given. On December 16, 1913, competitive designs for the monument were invited by the Secretary of War, and, as a result of this competition, and on the recommendation of the Commission of Fine Arts, Washington, D. C, the design submitted by The T. F. McGann & Sons Company, of Boston, Mass., was accepted. A contract was entered into witji .the successful competitors, which was approved by tJ-Je/Chief o f ErJgStfeei-sjon June 23, 1914. The erection of the monument was* cflmplefecT on Juhe*Q, 1915. The folloVyhg 1? Jtheistmptojr s See^riptjon of the monument: "Essentially the monument will consist of a monolithic granite shaft rising from a granite pedestal, before which will be placed a bronze bust of the President, and surmounting which will be a bronze finial. "The bronze finial will be visible from a considerable distance and as it is seen to consist of a Greek urn supported between the spread wings of two American eagles, it will indicate at once the burial place of a man of national character. "Upon a closer approach an heroic bronze bust of the President will be observed resting in a dignified manner upon a pedestal of the monolith after the excellent manner of the ancient Greek sarcophagi. "On each side of the monolith there will be a bas-relief, the one being a life-sized figure of the Republic with a shield bearing the seals of the United States and of the State of Virginia, significant of his relations with the national government and his native State. The other will be a draped female figure representing memory, holding in one hand a laurel wreath and cultivating with the other the young tree of the Republic, which during Tyler s administration began to grow and expand in an exceptional manner. "The four faces of the monolith will be panelled as indicated on the model and especially will the one on the rear be suitable for an inscription." c -2X PRESIDENT of tlie UNITED STATES JOHN TYLER WE ARE gathered together to do honor to a great man, and to dedicate to his memory this monument, erected by the government of his country, that he served with unexcelled fidelity and patriotism. John Tyler, tenth President of the United States, was born at the home of his father, "Greenway," in Charles City County, Virginia, on March 29, 1790. He came of a distinguished line of Vir ginians, and all his earlier ancestors of the Tyler name held places of significance in their communities, as justice of the county bench, or sheriff, or coroner. John Tyler, the President s great-grandfather, who died about 1/27, was a justice of James City County; John Tyler, his grandfather, who died in 1773, was marshal of the Vice- Admiralty Court, and his father, Judge John Tyler, not only occupied a prominent position as Judge of the General Court, but he was also Speaker of the House of Delegates of the General Assembly, Governor of the Commonwealth, and at the time of his death in 1813, at the age of sixty-five, Judge of the United States District Court of Virginia. The earliest of President Tyler s progenitors in the colony was Henry Tyler, who is first mentioned in the York County records in 1645; an d his son Henry, who was himself justice, sheriff, and coroner in succession, was the father of John Tyler, the President s great-grandfather. It is interesting to observe that since the immigrant, Henry Tyler, the line has been one "native and to the manor born," and that in no in stance, down to the present generation, have they had their i I homes elsewhere thap.in that Jiptable section of Colony and Commonwealth thai has been net inaptly designated as "The Cradle of the Reiit>l;e.i>: ; /:: : : /.. * : John Tyler, the marshal of the Vice-Admiralty Court, mar ried Anne Contesse, only daughter of Dr. Lewis Contesse, a French Huguenot physician, who lived and practised his pro fession in Williamsburg during the first quarter of the eigh teenth century ; and it is doubtless to the blending of the Gallic sprightliness of Contesse with the English steadiness which characterized the Tylers, that the remarkable talents of the descendants of this union may be attributed. Not only has the line of the Tylers since illustrated these talents, but also that of Bouldin in the persons of the descend ants of Judge Tyler s sister, Joanna, who married Major Wood Bouldin, and was mother of Thomas Tyler Bouldin, M. C, James Wood Bouldin, M. C., and Lewis Contesse Bouldin, long a State Senator; and who was also the ancestress of Wood Bouldin, late Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, and of Powhatan Bouldin, writer and author of "Home Reminiscences of John Randolph of Roanoke." This mingled strain is further distinguished in the talents and abil ities of the descendants of President Tyler s sister, Maria Henry, who married John B. Seawell, and was mother of two brilliant lawyers of the Commonwealth, John Tyler Seawell and Machen Boswell Seawell, and grandmother of Miss Molly Elliott Seawell, the novelist. But save the President himself, none of the descendants of John Tyler, the Marshal, and his wife, Anne Contesse, achieved or deserved a larger fame than did their son, Judge John Tyler. He was the personal friend of Thomas Jefferson and of Patrick Henry, and was imbued with their principles of republican constitutional government. Jefferson said of him that he was "a veteran patriot who, from the first dawn of the Revolution to this clay, has pursued unchangeably 12 the same honest course" ; and it is worthy of observation that the Sage of Monticello should have thus emphasized in the father the characteristic of consistency, which was one of the most noticeable traits in the career of Judge Tyler s distin guished son. Mr. Henry s admiration for Judge Tyler was marked. Judge Spencer Roane wrote to William Wirt that "Mr. Henry was very fond of John Tyler as a warm-hearted patriot and an honest and sensible man" ; and Roane himself, who adorned with conspicuous ability and learning the bench of the Supreme Court of the State, said of Judge Tyler that "his understand ing was of the highest order," and that he "was plain in his appearance, for his great soul disdained the tinsel of pomp and parade, and was intent only on virtue." Henry Clay said of him on the floor of Congress that "a purer patriot or more honest man never breathed the breath of life" ; while the Gen eral Assembly of his native State resolved of him that he was "a venerable patriot of the Revolution, a faithful and able legis lator, Judge and Chief Magistrate of this Commonwealth, a man of fixed and undeviating integrity, yet endeared to his friends by every softer virtue." Judge Tyler had been in his youth a student at the College of William and Mary, and in company with Mr. Jefferson he had heard Patrick Henry s speech on the Stamp Act, and had felt his patriotism kindled by the orator s voice and words. His antagonism to the British Government and his intolerance of its acts of oppression toward the Colonies became so earnest and outspoken that his father was accustomed to predict of him that he would be "hung as a rebel." He served on the Committee of Safety for Charles City County in 1774, and he joined Henry s troops, with the local company, of which he was captain, when Dunmore removed the powder from the magazine at Williamsburg. The Convention of 1776 made him Judge of Admiralty; but his eager patriotism impelled him to larger activities than those of the bench, and in 1778 13 he became a member of the Legislature. Here he served with ability and fidelity successively as chairman of the committee of justice, of the committee of the whole, and as Speaker. His fame as a statesman rests on his steady support in the Legislature of the military and financial measures of the American Revolution and of the Jeffersonian reforms during his incumbency of the office of Speaker, on his authorship of the resolutions for the Annapolis Assembly of 1786, on his stalwart opposition in the Virginia Convention of 1788 to the adoption of the Federal Constitution because it permitted the continuance of the slave-trade, a measure that was fastened on the country by the votes of four New England and two South ern States of the Union ; and on his services as a member of the judiciary, and as Governor of the Commonwealth. His gubernatorial term began on December i, 1808, a notable year in the history of Virginia, as being that which saw the abolition by England of the African slave trade, which Governor Tyler had so strenuously opposed in the Constitu tional Convention of 1788. His administration of the high office of Governor was marked by the simplicity of his manners and conduct, by the fidelity and uprightness with which he discharged his duties, and by his continual enjoyment in an unusual measure of the confidence, respect, and esteem of his constituents. His term expired in January, 1811, and during its continuance, under the influence of one of his messages to the General Assembly, on the subject of education and the schools, was established, through the legislative activities of James Barbour, of Orange, a successor in office of Governor Tyler, the still existing Literary Fund of Virginia. Judge Tyler s career on the bench was characterized by the same diligent attention to business, uprightness of purpose and intelligent discharge of duty, that adorned all of his public life. He had studied law for some years under Robert Carter Nicholas, a distinguished jurist and patriot of Judge Tyler s youth, whose name and fame were preserved and enchanced in 14 the lives of his four sons, of whom it has been said : "No Vir ginia family contributed more to Mr. Jefferson s personal suc cess than the powerful family of the Nicholases powerful in talents, powerful in probity, powerful in their numbers and union. On every page of Mr. Jefferson s political history the names of George, John, Wilson Gary, and Philip Norborne Nicholas are written." Having obtained his license, he practised for a time in James "City County, and in 1 772 removed to Charles City County. He was Judge of the Admiralty Court in 1776, and again in 1786, becoming by virtue of the latter appointment a Judge of the first Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. Upon the abo lition of the State Admiralty Court by the operation of the new Federal Constitution, he was elected in 1788 a Judge of the General Court, in which office he continued for twenty years. During his occupancy of the State bench, he contributed to the jurisprudence of the country his notable opinion in the case of Kamper vs. Hawkins,* in which he maintained the authority of the constitution over legislative enactment, and thereby aided in the establishment of the principle in America. In 1811, upon the expiration of his term as Governor, Judge Tyler was appointed, by President Madison, Judge of the District Court of the United States for the State of Vir ginia. Jefferson, with grim political enmity to his kinsman, John Marshall, doubtless had a sardonic pleasure in breaking through his established rule : "Never to solicit an appointment from the President," by asking in a letter of glowing enco mium the elevation to the district bench of the able and in domitable Tyler, with whom the Chief Justice would sit in holding the Circuit Court. He wrotef of him to Mr. Madison as the only man in Virginia capable of maintaining his own with Judge Marshall : "It will be difficult to find a character of firmness enough to preserve his independence on the same bench * i Virginia Cases, p. 20. t Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, IX, p. 275. with Marshall. Tyler, I am certain, would do it"; and his opinion was verified in Judge Tyler s successful contention against the principle of a universal common law jurisdiction for the Federal Courts, that was favored by his colleague. Judge Tyler was an earnest and patriotic supporter of the War of 1812 with Great Britain, and decided the first prize case arising out of the war. He held the office of District Judge until his death at "Greenway," Charles City County, Va., Jan uary 6, 1813, and died with the expression of his regret that he "could not live long enough to see that proud British nation once more humbled by American arms." Judge Tyler married Mary Armistead, only child of Robert Booth Armistead, of York County, Va., a descendant of William Armistead, immigrant to the Colony from Kirk Deighton, in Yorkshire, England, who was also a progenitor of President William Henry Harrison, and the two Whig candidates of 1839, "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," were cousins sprung from a common Armistead ancestor. John Tyler, the President, was the second son of the mar riage of Judge John Tyler and Mary Armistead. His earlier education was obtained in an "old field school," taught by a tyrannical Scot named McMurdo ; and the story is told that the future President, at the precocious age of eleven, was one of the leaders in a rebellion of the pupils against their master. The dominie was an admirer of John Tyler, and when he saw him participating in the attempt of the boys to lock him up, he exclaimed, after the manner of Scots dominies, "Et tu, Brute!" and surrendered. But his regard for the boy did not prevent Mr. McMurdo from reporting his son s conduct to Judge Tyler, who countered on the pedagogue s apt Latin quotation by another, since become scarcely less classic, and replied, "Sic semper tyrannis!" In 1807, young Tyler graduated at William and Mary Col lege, which with its roster of statesmen and lawyers, and 16 soldiers, had long been a nursery of greatness. He then studied law for two years under Edmund Randolph, Secretary of State under Washington, and son-in-law of Robert Carter Nicholas, his father s distinguished law preceptor. His father had been a student at William and Mary when Mr. Jefferson was study ing law in Williamsburg under the eminent jurist, George Wythe, and from him the son early imbibed, and continued to cherish and maintain throughout his life the republican princi ples of Jeffersonian democracy. It was with him a fundamental tenet, that the union of the States constituted in effect the concert of two nations, differing in institutions, in occupations, in religion, and in manners, each from the other, and that the only sure method of preventing separation or war was in the maintenance and preservation of the rights of the constituent States . This remained his political guiding-star through his career, and by its light must that career be tested and judged. He held that the activities of the Federal Government should be kept in most things very far apart from those of the States ; that they should be confined chiefly to those foreign relations that involved the action and conduct of a central power, while they interfered as little as possible with the internal and domes tic affairs of the country. Sprung from the struggle of antagonistic interests and passions, the Federal Constitution was full of trouble for the future ; and it was the aggressive assertion of the national prin ciple by the North in derogation of this principle held by Mr. Tyler, that stirred the fires of nullification in 1832, and kindled the mighty conflagration of secession and war in 1861, which came near resulting in that permanent disruption which he apprehended, and so long sought to avert. It is in the profound recognition of this great fundamental characteristic of President Tyler s political creed that the key to his political history is to be found. Believing as he did in the basic idea that the Union of North and South a union that from the beginning was socially and economically incon- 17 grous could only be maintained through State-Rights, Mr. Tyler was, as circumstances developed, first a Democratic- Republican, and when that party broke up in 1824-1828 a State-Rights Democrat, and when the Jackson and Van Buren nationalists in the Democratic party obtained control of it and as a consequence the Whig party was formed, a Whig who agreed with the State-Rights Democrats on state-rights and dif fered from nationalist Democrats on nationalism. After all is said, there was never for him a shadow of variableness or turn ing from the great doctrine of State-Rights, which was a very part of himself. His attitude was never a change of position, but a natural alignment with parties as they successively de veloped. In 1809, two years before attaining his majority, the young graduate of William and Mary was admitted to the bar; and had already entered upon a good practice, when in 1811 he was elected to the General Assembly. Here he was a firm sup porter of Mr. Madison s election ; and at an early stage of his service, he became prominent as an eloquent and persuasive speaker. The question of the recharter of the Bank of the United States was a burning political issue of the times, as it continued to be for many years. William B. Giles and Richard Brent, the Senators from Virginia, ignored the instructions of the Virginia Legislature, and favored in 1811 the recharter of the bank. In January, 1812, Mr. Tyler introduced a resolu tion censuring these Senators, taking then the two positions from which he never deviated, first that the act creating the bank was in violation of the Federal Constitution, and, second, that the legislature of a State had the right to instruct its senators in Congress, whose duty it was to obey such instruc tions or to resign. It is not without interest to note that it was Mr. Benjamin Watkins Leigh who drew the instructions of the Virginia Leg islature to the Senators ; and that Mr. Tyler was the author of its resolution of censure ; for subsequent events, growing out of 18 these two resolutions, serve to illustrate the latter s steady ad herence to what he conceived to be a principle. When Benton offered his famous "Expunging Resolution" in the United States Senate, Mr. Leigh and Mr. Tyler were Senators from Virginia. The Virginia Legislature instructed these Senators to support the "Expunging Resolution." Both refused to obey, but Mr. Tyler s refusal was accompanied by his regis- nation. On the 2Oth of March, 1813, Mr. Tyler married Miss Letitia Christian, daughter of Robert Christian, of New Kent County, Va. "This marriage," it was 1 said, "united the house of Democracy in the bridegroom and the house of Federalism in the bride" ; but the new house was Democratic. Robert Tyler, a son of this marriage, was distinguished as poet, politician, and orator. He was clerk of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and chairman of the Democratic party in that State, register of the Treasury of the Southern Con federacy, and at the time of his death, in 1877, was editor of the Montgomery Mail and Advertiser. A few weeks after his marriage, Mr. Tyler left his home at the head of a militia company to assist in the defense of Richmond, then threatened by the British; but his command was not called into action, and his military service was con cluded after a month. Mr. Tyler was re-elected annually to the Legislature until 1815, when he was elected a member of the Executive Council, and the next year, when a vacancy occurred in his congres sional district, he was chosen for the unexpired term. He was again elected to Congress for two successive terms, and early in his career became conspicuous as a strict constructionist. He opposed Mr. Calhoun s bill for internal improvements by the Federal Government, on the grounds of unconstitutionally, and of lack of uniform application; he antagonized the enact ment of a national bankrupt law ; and he made a great speech 19 against the bank, and to the circulation of this speech in his district he attributed his first re-election to Congress without opposition. His views on slavery were those of his father, who had voted in the Convention of 1788 against the adoption of the Federal Constitution largely on the ground that it permitted the continuance of the slave trade. In the debates in Congress on the admission of Missouri, he took strong position against any restriction of slavery in the new State, insisting with great vigor and power that, by the very terms of the Federal Consti tution, the territories should, when admitted, possess all the rights of the original States. He went further, and added, as Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison also thought, that it was unfair for the North, which had accomplished within its limits the emancipation and scattering of the slaves, to wall in Virginia s population, and thereby to confirm the continuance of slavery there. He was foremost and most persistent in his congres sional course in holding that Congress had no constitutional power to legislate either for or against slavery in any territory; and when the Missouri Compromise measure was adopted, with its demarking line of 36 degrees, 30 minutes, that seemed to Mr. Jefferson in his old age at Monticello, "like a fire-bell in the night," Mr. Tyler cast his vote in the negative, with the profound and well-founded conviction, as against that of Mr. Clay and of Mr. Calhoun, that the compromise bill was an abject surrender of the whole situation. But Mr. Tyler never changed his earliest judgment that a negro population was an evil, whether slave or free; and throughout his career he was a consistent opponent of the con tinuance of the slave-trade, which his own State of Virginia had been the first constituted government in the world to pro hibit in 1778. In 1832, as a member of the Senate committee, he inserted in the code of laws, prepared by him for the District of Col- 20 umbia, a provision prohibiting the use of the District as a slave mart. When President, he wrote in his message to Congress, June i, 1841, that the highest consideration of public honor, as well as the strongest promptings of humanity, require a re sort to the most vigorous efforts to suppress the trade; and again in his message of December 7, 1841, he invited the atten tion of Congress to existing laws for its suppression, and recommended such alterations as might give them greater force and efficiency. Later, in 1842, he personally secured* the in sertion of a clause in the Ashburton Treaty, providing for the maintenance and co-operation of British and American squad rons off the coast of Africa for the suppression of the trade, and urged the ratification of the treaty upon the Senate as con ducive to the abolition of what he termed the "unlawful and inhuman traffic." As to the abolition of slavery itself, he committed it to the operation of time, believing that if it could not be attained by the deportation of the negroes as contemplated by the African Colonization Society, of whose Virginia branch he was Presi dent in 1838, it would take place by some other means, and peaceably, if left free from organized assaults on the part of the Northern abolitionists. Indeed, an agency of this character, not duly recognized politically at the time, was the invention of the reaper by a Virginian, in Rockbridge County, Cyrus Hall McCormick. The phenomenal development of all kinds of agricultural machinery, of which this invention proved a stimulus, would probably have made slavery a burden upon the planter and have led to its final abolition. In the first session of the Sixteenth Congress a protective tariff bill was for the first time passed by the House, but re jected by the Senate. Strict constructionists, like Mr. Tyler, believed that the sole power given by the Constitution to Con gress in the fixing of tariffs was to provide thereby for the * See Mr. Tyler s letter in Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, p. 240, also p. 238. 21 expenses of government and for the payment of the national debt; and that any arrangement of duties for the benefit of Northern manufacturers was one-sided and unfair and a usur pation of a power not granted or implied. To this tariff bill, Mr. Tyler made the opening objections in an argument of great force, which created a deep impression, though it did not defeat the passage of the measure in the House. In 1821, on account of failing health, Mr. Tyler resigned his seat in the House of Representatives, and retired to private life. Two years later, however, he was again elected to the General Assembly ol Virginia, and in the year following he was nominated for the United States Senate to fill a vacancy, but was defeated by Mr. Tazewell. In 1824, he opposed the attempted removal of William and Mary College to Richmond, and later became successively rector and chancellor of that venerable institution of learning, whose earlier services in the cause of education and scholarship, after an entire prostration by the war between the States, have been renewed in the able administration of his son, Dr. Lyon G. Tyler, its present President. In December, 1825, Mr. Tyler was elected Governor of Virginia by the Legislature, which, down to the Constitution of 1850, possessed the power of gubernatorial election. He was re-elected Governor for a second term by an unanimous vote; but before completing this term he was sent, in 1827, to the United States Senate, over John Randolph of Roanoke, by a combination of the Clay and Adams men in the Legislature with the followers of William H. Crawford. At this point, for a better understanding of Mr. Tyler s career, a brief retrospect is advisable. In 1816 the old Federal ist party of Hamilton and John Adams was crushed and buried under the odium excited by its opposition to the War of 1812, and during Mr. Monroe s administration its ancient antagonist, the Democratic-Republican party of Jefferson, was the only 22 political organization in the country. Towards the end of Monroe s term, in 1824, this party split into various factions, headed by Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay. Of these Crawford was a recog nized strict constructionist, and unequivocally opposed to the ideas then popular under the name of the American system, embracing internal improvements and a protective tariff. Mr. Tyler, along with Mr. Jefferson and the other Virginia leaders, favored Mr. Crawford as Monroe s successor, but he was soon retired from the race by a stroke of paralysis. None of the candidates receiving a majority vote of the Electoral College, the election came before the House of Representatives, which selected Mr. Adams by a narrow majority of one State in a minority vote of the members. The strict constructionists were inclined to favor Mr. John Quincy Adams over either Clay or Jackson, who were too much committed to the Ameri can system. The charge of a corrupt bargain at this time between Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, characterized by the bitter tongue of John Randolph as the bargain of "Blifil and Black George, the Puritan and the Blackleg, was never credited by Mr. Tyler, but he found himself the object of a not dissimilar attack on the part of some of the Jackson men, upon his election soon after as Senator over Mr. Randolph, in the assertion that there must have been some secret and reprehensible understanding in the matter between him and Mr. Clay. There was no truth in the charge, as there is frequently no truth in personal political accusation ; and Mr. Tyler believed that its object was to force him into some unnecessary statement or avowal, in favor of Jackson, which he refused to make. The scheme, if it was such, failed. But upon Mr. Adams taking a decided position in his messages for the American system, the Crawford strict constructionists, forced to what they regarded as a choice of evils, turned to Jackson, and joined in with his nationalist following. Mr. Tyler went along with the rest of the Craw- 23 ford men, and voted for Jackson in the election of 1828. The factions of the Democratic-Republican Party crystallized into two new parties. The followers of Clay and John Quincy Adams took the name of National Republicans, and the fol lowers of Jackson and Crawford that of Democrats. Neither party admitted any kinship with the defunct Federalist Party of Hamilton and John Adams. Both Randolph and Tyler, however, declined to become partisans of Jackson, and, while they both supported him in the canvass of 1832, they made of him on this occasion, as before, a choice of evils. In 1829, while Senator, Mr. Tyler was elected a member of the famous Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830, an assembly of which Mr. Ritchie wrote in his preface to its debates, and before many of its younger members had achieved their subsequent fame, that some have held it equal to the celebrated convention which met in Virginia in the year 1788 to pass upon the Federal Constitution," and which numbered in its membership of ninety-six, two ex-Presidents of the Union, the Chief Justice, and many men already distinguished on the bench and at the bar, and included others who were then yet to become presidents, senators, governors, members of presidential cabinets, ministers abroad, and members of the Supreme Court of the United States. He returned from this body to his seat in the Senate, and found a further predilection for President Jackson in the lat- ter s veto of the Maysville Turnpike Bill in 1830. But Jack son s antagonism to internal improvements was only directed against roads and did not apply to water courses, and what was regarded by the strict obstructionists as his unconstitutional usurpation of executive powers in favoring appropriations for rivers and harbors, in making partisan removals, in approving the protective tariff of 1832, and in removing the deposits from the United States Bank, resulted in the complete alienation of the Crawford men. - 4 Out of the political conflicts of the period emerged the tariff of abominations" of 1828, and the protective tariff of 1832, carried through Congress by J. Q. Adams "in perfect concert with the administration" * and the "Bloody Force Bill," in 1833. To all of these measures Mr. Tyler was alike opposed. And while he did not favor nullification as a remedy for the tariff, he denounced Jackson s famous proclamation of December 10, 1832, against South Carolina as "sweeping away all the barriers of the Constitution," and as in effect "establish ing a consolidated military despotism." Jackson, with relentless determination, pursued his dic tatorial way. A prominent congressman of Virginia, who said to him that he had been his friend and supporter when he was right, but could not go with him when he was wrong, was met by the characteristic reply from the President that he did not care for the kind of friend and supporter who would stand by him only when he was right, but that the friends he desired were those who would stand by him when he was wrong. Mr. Tyler, while opposed to the tariff, which on the admis sion of Mr. Dickerson, of New Jersey, made on the floor of the Senate, annually transferred from the South to the North $12,000,000, did not, as already stated, favor nullification; but when the ballot was taken on the Force Bill, investing the President with extraordinary powers to enforce the obnoxious tariff, and when all the rest of the opposition left their seats, he remained, and his was the sole vote in the Senate recorded against it on its passage. However, the danger of war and the almost certain at tempted destruction of the Union that was threatened by the Force Bill were obviated by the Compromise Tariff Bill which Mr. Clay introduced into the Senate; and this bill in all re spects was the work of Mr. Tyler. He suggested the details to Mr. Clay, prevailed upon him to offer it, and brought about a *Niles, Register, LXIII, p. 172. 25 meeting of Mr. Clay with Mr. Calhoun, who agreed to support it.* Thus the Union was saved; for a blow struck at South Carolina at this time would have united the whole South, as it did in 1861, when that section was relatively much weaker. While the Force Bill was pending, Mr. Tyler s term expired, and his re-election was contested by the able James McDowell, of Rockbridge, who was, however, defeated by him. The excitement over these events had scarcely subsided, when the passions of men were rekindled by Jackson s removal of the Federal deposits from the United States Bank. The Vir ginia Legislature, which until Jackson s proclamation in De cember, 1832, had supported his administration, was in opposi tion, and her delegation in Congress with practical unanimity determined in caucus in favor of the restoration of the deposits to the bank, while public opinion in the State became over whelmingly anti-Jackson. In rebuke of the President s as sumptions and arrogations to himself of what they deemed a violation of the law, Mr. Tyler and Mr. Clay worked enthu siastically with Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Webster in behalf of the Senate resolution of censure, which was adopted. Then came the determined effort of Thomas H. Benton to have this censure expunged from the journal of the Senate. Virginia experienced another change of sentiment, and turned Jacksonian; and Mr. Tyler was instructed in 1836 to vote for the expunction. He declined, and resigned from the Senate, having been honored by election as President pro tem of that body at the close of the session of 1834-1835. Out of the ruck and turmoil of it all grew a great coalition of many men of many minds, that became the National Whig Party. Its parents were the anti-tariff men and strict con- structionists largely located in the South, and Mr. Clay s Na tional Republican Party who believed in the American System. * See Mr. Tyler s letter to John Floyd in William and Mary Quar terly Magazine, XXI, 8-10; and Letters and Times of the Tylers, I, 456-460: 466-67. 26 An analysis of the Presidential votes in the years 1836 and 1840 demonstrates that the Southern Whigs were drawn from the old Crawford element of the Democratic-Republican Party. Gathered about this formidable alliance were others who had been nullifiers, and others who had been protectionists; while the anti-Masonic Party, that had grown up about the historic Masonic episode of Morgan, formed the rearguard of the potential though incongrous phalanx. Thus, while some members of the new National Whig Party originally favored a protective tariff, others had fiercely opposed it ; some had been for a United States Bank, and others against a bank of any kind ; some had favored internal improve ments by the national government, and others had opposed, on the ground of unconstitutionally ; and there were also some who continued Nullifiers in the expectation of a future success ful revival of the doctrine. The generic appellation of "Whig" embraced all the hetero- genous elements thus united, and their real single bond of union was opposition to Jackson and the Jacksonian democracy. It was some years before the Whig Party attempted a formula tion of principles and policies, for the obvious reason that in such an association there could be no agreement in any other thing than the one thing of making common cause against executive usurpation. In the election of 1836 no common Presidential candidate could be agreed upon by the W higs. William Henry Harrison was the favorite candidate of the National Republican Whigs of the North, and Hugh L. White was the favorite of the State-Rights Whigs of the South ; but the Massachusetts Whigs voted for Webster, and the South Carolina Whigs voted for Willie P. Mangum. Mr. Tyler was placed upon the White ticket for Vice-President, and in several States upon the Har rison ticket, but most of the Northern States supported Francis Granger. Under these circumstances, the Democrats had an 27 easy victory, and no one of the Whig candidates was elected. "The double-shotted ticket killed us," wrote Mr. Tyler to Mr. Wise, after the election. In 1838, Mr. Tyler was again sent to the State Legislature, and, as the martyr to the expunging resolution, was at once placed by his friends in nomination for the United States Senate, but a small faction calling themselves "Conservatives," led by William C. Rives, who, because of the Independent Treasury measure favored by Mr. Van Buren, had severed relations with the Democratic Party, held the balance of power between the Whigs and Democrats and prevented his election. An intrigue set on foot by Mr. Clay, by which the majority of the Whig vote was finally cast for Mr. Rives, w r as in turn de feated by Mr. Tyler s particular friends, who were indignant at what they termed his betrayal by Mr. Clay, and the Legisla ture adjourned without any election at this time. Before it could reassemble the great Whig National Con vention assembled at Harrisburg, Pa., December 4, 1839, and nominated the party s first successful ticket, Harrison and Tyler, which was elected in the following year. The party made its nomination with a view to the success which it achieved, but, as is most significant, it promulgated no plat form. In the light of this anomalous fact, and of the former irre concilable political ideas and interests of the various factions from which it sprung, are to be read the accusations that were made against Mr. Tyler by his enemies, w r hen after the death of General Harrison he succeeded to the office of President, April 4, 1841. To all such accusations of his having deserted Whig principles and the Whig Party during his administration it may be answered that his light had shone always as a beacon on a hill ; that he was known of all men throughout his political career to have been a strict constructionist and State-Rights advocate ; that he was bound by no pledge of political doctrine, 28 written or unwritten, to the incongruous party that elected him ; and that he discharged the duties of his high office in the loftiest spirit of patriotism, and according to the profound and mature convictions that he had always entertained in regard to constitutional government. During the Presidential canvass of 1840, the course of the Whig orators in the North was to talk loudly of "reform," and to say nothing of the old issues of bank, tariff, and internal improvements. In the South, where the Whig constituencies were practically all for State-Rights, they were strong in their professions against these measures. And Mr. Clay s position was that all the old issues had become "obsolete" in the pres ence of the Federalism of the Jackson- Van Buren Democracy. Indeed, in a speech made in the Senate in September, 1841, Mr. Buchanan declared that "during the whole election cam paign of 1840 he never saw one single resolution in favor of a national bank, which had been passed by any Whig meeting in any part of the country." * It is a notable fact that in this canvass Mr. Clay and many other prominent Whigs expressed in their speeches the very views which Mr. Tyler put into concrete effect in his vetoes of the bank-bills and of the tariff-bills, and it was for the first time, upon his veto of the Fiscal Corporation Bill, that the Whig members of Congress put forth, in their "Address to the Peo ple," a written declaration of what purported to be Whig pur poses and policies ; and declaring that the President had im periled these Whig measures, proclaimed that "all political connection between them and John Tyler was at an end." This pronunciamento may be attributed solely to the party domi nance of Mr. Clay and of the Northern National Republican Whig influence in Congress. * The Whig Party in the South, A. C. Cole (American Historical Association, Washington, 1913), pages 29, 30, and seq., and authorities cited. Speech of Mr. Buchanan in Congressional Globe, appendix to Vol. X, p. 343- 29 Mr. Tyler took over the Harrison Cabinet, and soon was called to confront the currency question. He had no confidence in any mere bank at this time as a remedy for the financial troubles in the country, but he naturally desired to gratify the Whig leaders if possible. As he did not believe that Con gress had power to create corporations in the States, he gave his Cabinet to understand that he would approve any bank for the District of Columbia, if accepted and established in good faith by the Whigs. Accordingly, Thomas Ewing, the Secre tary of the Treasury, drew a bank bill for the District, which, though it contained features of local discounting that were objectionable to Mr. Tyler, had nothing actually unconstitu tional about it. But when this bill, which was known as a measure to establish the Fiscal Bank of the United States, was proposed in Congress, Mr. Clay moved to substitute for the clause requiring the assent of the States to the creation of branches another clause authorizing the bank to establish branches without the consent of the States. The bill passed Congress and was vetoed by the President, and Mr. Ewing admitted that "the veto was in conformity with the President s opinions pertinaciously adhered to in all his conversations." The attempt then was made to prepare another bill for what became known as the Fiscal Corporation of the United States, and on August 18, 1841, the President discussed its principal outlines in Cabinet. There was no written bill before them. At this meeting he authorized two of the Cabinet officers, Mr. Ewing and Mr. Webster, to confer with Messrs. Sergeant and Berrien, who represented the Whigs in the House of Represent atives, about putting the bill in shape for Congress. Looking for ground to justify their desertion of the President, Ewing and two other members of the Cabinet afterwards asserted in their letters of resignation that this bill was drawn to conform to the President s ideas as outlined to them, and that he acted in bad faith in vetoing it a charge that has been frequently 30 repeated in partisan works. The baseless character of the charge is shown from a statement of the facts. No evidence was ever produced that Mr. Tyler saw the bill before its introduction in Congress, though Mr. Ewing said that he "heard" that he had both seen and approved it. He afterwards gave the name of Mr. Webster as his informant. But Webster, though thus publicly mentioned, never substan tiated him; but, on the contrary, declared in a published letter that "he had seen no sufficient reason for the dissolution of the late Cabinet by the voluntary act of its members." On the other hand, there is the emphatic denial of the President that he ever saw the bill till it appeared in Congress, and when told of its defects he tried in every way to have it properly amended. His memorable words were : T declare under all the solemn ities that can attend such a declaration, that my consent to that bill was never obtained." Neither is there any pretense of proof that Mr. Tyler was in any way committed to Congress or to any of its members in favor of the bill, for the Cabinet members admitted that Ewing and Webster had been cautioned by the President at the Cabi net meeting "not to commit him" in their dealings with Messrs. Sergeant and Berrien. But the distinction is taken that the President, though not committed to any one in Congress, was committed to his Cabinet as favoring the measure. Such a notion of the relations of a President to his Cabinet would seem to be a novel one. A President s advisers are supposed to be a part of the President s official identity, and one of the chief objects of a Cabinet meeting is to discuss matters with a view to maturing opinions. The acceptance of the idea that a President in Cabinet council must be held committed to any chance expression he might there let fall would be destructive of all confidence between him and his Cabinet members. In this case the letters of resignation contain in themselves alone the strongest evidence that the President never for a 31 moment committed his conscience to any man s keeping. Ac cording to the letter of resignation of John Bell, the Secretary of War, the President at the Cabinet meeting expressed "a wish to see the bill before it was presented to the House, if it could be so managed." Why should he have made this demand, if he had parted with his control over the bill? He told Mr. Webster and Mr. Ewing that they might express to the Whig Committee "their confidence and belief that such a bill as had just been agreed upon would receive his sanction, but it should be a matter of inference from his veto message and his general views." What could he mean by this, except that he wanted to be consistent with his action in the Fiscal Bank Bill, and that he reserved the right of final judgment? How Webster re garded the matter is shown by his note of August 2Oth, to the President, written after talking with Sergeant and Berrien, to whom he had gone in pursuance of the understanding at the Cabinet meeting : "I have done or said nothing as from you or by your authority or implicating you in the slightest degree. If any measure pass, you will be perfectly free to exercise your constitutional power wholly uncommitted, except so far as may be gathered from your public and official acts." This letter can not be reasonably regarded as consistent with the thought that the President in conscience was bound in any way to his Cabi net on the Fiscal Corporation Bill. The President himself shows that the principle of the Fis cal Corporation was as objectionable as the principle of the bill just vetoed. It was not reconcilable with his late veto or his other official acts. The Fiscal Corporation was a cor poration created by Congress in its national character, and not a local bank of the District of Columbia created by Congress in its character as the local legislature of the District. It dealt ostensibly in exchanges, but admitted a system of local dis counts, which he had condemned in his late veto message and at the Cabinet meeting. But whether a bank of local discount 32 or an exchange bank, it lacked the fundamental feature of State assent as to branches. Mr. Tyler states that he had suggested to the Cabinet not a national bank, but a local bank of the District of Columbia without the discounting power of the Fiscal Bank Bill, either in its original shape as fashioned by Mr. Ewing, or as amended by Mr. Clay, and one confined to dealing in foreign exchanges. So far as the right of a local bank to deal in foreign exchanges was concerned, Mr. Tyler looked to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Bank of Augusta vs. Earle (13 Peters Reports, 510), which settled the principle that a bank of one sovereign country authorized to deal in exchanges might, by the comity of nations, establish agencies or branches for that purpose in another sovereign and independent country unless prohibited by its laws from so doing. Such was the purport of his suggestions at the Cabinet meeting, and Mr. Tyler s account* of the matter tallies with the statement of one of the Whigs, Mr. A. H. H. Stuart, of Virginia, who admits that on August i6th, two days before the Cabinet met, he brought a paper containing the clause in regard to branches to the President, who wrote upon the mar gin an amendment to meet the case in point. Under it the consent to branches might be taken as implied until forbidden by the State. This amendment differed in operation, but not in principle from the original requirement as to branches in Ewing s Bill. The difference in operation, occasioned by re stricting the bill to exchanges, was a distinction founded on the law of nations, which law is itself founded on the consent of States ; but the plan gave opportunity for the bank to estab lish branches more freely, and for this reason Mr. Tyler hoped that it would be pleasing to the Whig majority. Yet the Whigs seized upon Mr. Tyler s patriotic overture as an abso- * For Mr. Tyler s own clear and conclusive account of the Bank bills, see Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 66-70 ; 98-102. 33 lute surrender, and the Fiscal Corporation bill appeared in Congress without any limitation on the establishment of branches. Mr. Tyler tried to have the bill amended, and failing to effect this tried to have it postponed, but the Whigs, bent upon making an issue with Mr. Tyler before the people, ruth lessly pushed the measure, just as it was, to its passage. A second veto followed; all the Cabinet resigned except Mr. Web ster, and the pronunciamento mentioned was issued. After all, the question between Mr. Tyler and the Whigs was not a mere one of bank and no bank, but the old one of centraliza tion of power in Congress and State-Rights, of a consolidated nation and a confederated republic. Despite the decadence of State-Rights, the fact enduring to this day is that Mr. Tyler saved the country from a vast moneyed trust, and Carl Schurz declares* that "the verdict of impartial history will probably be that John Tyler by prevent ing by his veto the incorporation of another United States Bank rendered his country a valuable service." The plan of a United States Bank in the old sense of the word, as a single gigantic private corporation, owning numerous affiliated banks in all the States and made the depositary and beneficiary of all the moneys of the government, may safely be said to be a discarded thing forever. Mr. Tyler, during the next two years, while the Whigs had a majority in Congress, received but slight support from that party, and was in little better case with the Democratic ma jority, dominated by the Van Buren influence, when that party succeeded in legislative superiority. He relied upon the wings of either party, who were, as he had always been, the support ers of State-Rights. After the resignation of the Harrison appointees, with the exception of Mr. Webster, who did not approve the conduct of the Whigs and ever remained the Presi dent s warm personal friend, he filled his Cabinet with State- * Schurz, Henry Clay, II, 209 (American Statesmen Series}. 34 Rights Whigs, who, like himself, had voted for Harrison, and two years later he included in it several State-Rights Demo crats who were opposed to Van Buren. The steadiness with which he met these varying conditions was matched by his firmness in sustaining the full dignity of his position. He did not regard himself as President by "acci dent," or "chance," or as "a Vice-President acting as Presi dent," but as President by election and by the constitution. As such he was recognized by both Houses of Congress. Nor, in his opinion, simply because his active functions were depend ent upon the death of President Harrison, did that event, to use the slang phrase of the Whigs, make him an "accidental President" any more than was the then Queen of England. Victoria, an accidental monarch, because her accession to the throne had been contingent on the death of her uncle, William IV. According to the constitution, when the Vice-President is elected, it is for the very purpose of his succeeding to the office of President, and there is no room for "chance"; or as Caleb dishing, the eminent lawyer of Massachusetts, expressed it, the Vice-President s succession is a "fixed fact" by the constitution. By his determined and fortunate stand he pre served the executive from a deplorable loss of power and authority, and established the precedent that has been followed to this day. In place of the vetoed bank bills, which his opponents vainly sought to pass over his veto, he drafted as a substitute the Exchequer Bill, which was declared* by Mr. Webster in its significance and importance to be only inferior to the Fed eral Constitution itself, and which in its character as a govern ment measure, with a board of control under the supervision of the Treasury Department, and in its provisions to issue government notes and receive deposits, was a prototypef of * In his Faneiiil Hall speech, September 30, 1842. t The connection was noted by Senator N. W. Aldrich, of Rhode Island, in a recent speech. 35 the recently-enacted Federal Reserve Act. When partisan politics occasioned the rejection of the exchequer by Congress, President Tyler, for the remainder of his administration, had the moneys of the government in what was practically his own private keeping, and the country lost not one dollar. After the currency question was disposed of, he had to con front, in 1842, the equally important, if not more important, one of the revenue. He inherited a bankrupt treasury, which necessitated a public loan and a revision of the compromise tariff of 1833; and for floating the loan successfully he wished to pledge the net proceeds of the sales of the public lands 1 . But the Whig Congress, under the leadership of Mr. Clay, insisted on giving this only immediately reliable fund to the States, and attached a rider for this purpose to the new tariff bill, thus uniting in the same measure two diametrically op posite things one having for its object putting money in, and the other, taking money from, the treasury. To effect a separation the President had to resort, as in the bank affair, to two vetoes ; and at length Congress passed, unencumbered with the rider, the Whig tariff of 1842, which, despite some objec tionable protective features, the President approved as a reve nue measure demanded by the exigencies of the treasury. Nor did it disappoint his expectations, as it speedily filled the empty treasury to overflowing. The disapproval of the people of the conduct of the Whigs was registered in the fall elections of 1842. The Whig Party was swept from power, and two years later, when Mr. Clay was the Whig candidate for the Presidency, he was defeated. The confusion and clamor of these earlier political strug gles have long since passed away, and in the retrospective of history men have come to see clearly the truths that have emerged from them. Of these truths there is now none more salient and conspicuous than that those who charged Mr. Tyler with recreancy to the Whig Party and its principles bore false witness against him. As has been said of him : "It was 36 impossible in the nature of things for a party composed of so many discordant and opposing elements to have any well- defined principles or determinate policy; and it was perfectly understood in the Harrisburg Convention, which nominated Harrison and Tyler, that Mr. Tyler was put on the ticket, as well on account of his great popularity throughout the country, as for his well-known anti-bank, anti-tariff, strict constructionist, State-Rights and anti-internal improvement views and principles." As General Wise truly says : "He did not commit himself to a Federal party or Federal opinions by accepting the nomination, but the Whig Party committed itself to Democratic principles, and selected a Democrat to guard them/ At the time of the accession of Mr. Tyler to the Presidency, the diplomacy of England apparently contemplated an absorp tion of that section of the American Continent, that lay west of the Mississippi River a territory which comprised Texas, Colorado, Xew Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington and which was claimed by Mexico, but uncontrolled by her authority. From this situation grew the Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain, negotiated, as Mr. Webster himself says :* "From step to step and from day to day under the President s own imme diate supervision and direction," everything being first agreed upon in informal conferences and afterwards reduced to writ ing and submitted to him for his final corrections. ! And out of the same conditions also grew his successful procurement of the independence of the Sandwich Islands, now an important dependency of the United States. Mr. Tyler applied the Mon roe Doctrine to these islands as part of this continent, and thus in being the first president to reach out to them the protecting arm of this government led the way to their ultimate acquisi tion under President McKinley. * Daniel Webster to Lewis Cass (Xiles. Register, LXIV, p. 79). t Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 242; III, 205-206 37 But the most far reaching question of this diplomacy of Great Britain and the United States related to Texas and California. As early as 1841, Mr. Tyler had pointed out to Mr. Webster the significance to the United States of the ulti mate acquisition of Texas , and this idea continued persistently with him, until its consummation was finally achieved and the joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress providing for annexation was adopted and signed by him on the last day of his term of office. That this great purpose was very near his heart, and that its ultimate accomplishment afforded him much satisfaction is indicated in a letter to Mr. Alexander Gardiner, in which he wrote, on the eve of his retirement from the presi dency: "We shall leave the government and country sound and prosperous; and if the annexation of Texas shall crown off my public life, I shall neither retire ignominiously, nor be soon forgotten." Whatever the views of other Southern men, he took from the first, as to Texas , the broad ground of the national good the monopoly of the cotton plant, the growth of the coastwise and foreign traffic, and the extension of the national domain. And that in all the manifold circumstances whch marked the development and accomplishment of the great measure of an nexation his motives and conduct were of a high and noble character is confirmed by Dr. Justin H. Smith, of Boston, who, in his recent work, "The Annexation of Texas" (1911), has subjected the whole question to the most thorough and pains taking investigation. In his summary of the actions and mo tives of men, North and South, both for and against the meas ure, Dr. Smith declares that "among the leaders, Tyler, the unpopular, comes out rather the best, as so often occurs when conduct and principles are closely examined." By resorting to joint resolutions of Congress for the annexation of Texas, he again furnished a precedent to our own times. Although this method of annexation was strongly denounced as unconstitu tional, especially in the North, it was later resorted to by Mr. 38 McKinley, a Northern President, in effecting the annexation of the Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands. Among the other achievements of his administration were the suppression of Dorr s Insurrection in Rhode Island, the settlement of the difficulties with Great Britain in the cases of the Caroline and Creole, the reduction of the Danish Sound dues (the first reduction ever made of the Danish tariff of 1696), and the conclusion of the Seminole War in Florida ; and of the unfinished measures turned over to Mr. Polk, his suc cessor, were the Oregon boundary and the acquisition of Cali fornia and New Mexico, w r hich questions, by a brilliant stroke of diplomacy, he sought informally to join under a tripartite arrangement between Great Britain, Mexico, and the United States,* and the successful conclusion of which, had his term of office permitted it, might have saved the country from the war with Mexico, and from the consequent struggles over slavery. As to his treatment of the Rhode Island question, Mr. Webster asserted that "it was worthy of all praise and one of the most fortunate incidents in your (Tyler s) administration for your own reputation." Great as was his constructive statesmanship in his "Ex chequer" proposition, in his diplomacy as illustrated in the treaties negotiated with Great Britain and with China, f and in his acquisition to the Union of the imperial domain of Texas, it is no less creditable to his administrative capacity and ex perience that he could truthfully proclaim as he wrote to Mr. Gardiner, that he left the government sound and prosperous." When his term expired, there was a balance in the Federal Treasury of eight millions of dollars; and it is said that but one defaulter had been discovered during his Presidential term, * Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 260, 447-449, 692; III, 176, (Let ter of Ben. E. Green). t It is not generally known that when Mr. Gushing was sent to China, he was given authority to treat also with Japan. See Letter of Mr. Tyler in Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 200-201. 39 and he for the paltry sum of fifteen dollars; while the expenses of government were reduced one-fourth, as compared with those of the preceding administration. Mr. Webster paid him the tribute of saying:* "that in all things respecting the ex penditures of the public moneys he was remarkably cautious, exact and particular." And yet no public interest was neglected. The Navy Department hitherto chiefly conspicuous for its chaotic con ditions was organized into bureaus with a veteran commander at the head of each. The naval force was augmented by two new squadrons the Home and the African squadrons. The National Observatory was established with the eminent Vir ginia scientist, Matthew F. Maury, at its head, and the first steps were taken towards the founding of the United States Naval Academy. Increased efficiency was imparted to the army, and the fortifications at Old Point and other places, which Mr. Tyler received in an almost dismantled condition, bristled when he left the government with guns and military equipment. He filled the important posts abroad with men like Everett, Wheaton, Irving, Thompson, Gushing and Payne - distinguished for ability and love of literature. He threw the influence of his office in favor of Morse and his telegraph, sent Fremont to discover the best path over the Western plains and through the mountains to Oregon, and encouraged the caravans of immigrants under Elijah White and others, who went to make their homes on the distant waters of the Colum bia River. He had married, as his second wife, in June, 1844, Miss Julia Gardiner, daughter of Hon. David and Juliana Gardiner, of Long Island, New York, who was the mother of his two still living sons, the Hon. David Gardiner Tyler, ex-Congress man and present Circuit Judge, and Dr. Lyon G. Tyler, the distinguished scholar and historian, and present President since * Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster, II, p. 275. 40 1 888 of the ancient College of William and Mary. His second wife lies buried by his side beneath this monument. After leaving the White House, Mr. Tyler went to live on an estate in Charles City County, three miles from "Green- way," his father s old home and his own birthplace, and to his new residence he gave the name of "Sherwood Forest." Here he continued to dwell for the rest of his life, ceasing to take an active part in politics, but even in his retirement exercising a potent influence on public opinion in Virginia. During this time he was in much demand for lectures and addresses, and in 1857 he was the orator at the celebration of the two hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement at Jamestown. Old enmities died away, and he acquired much of his former great popularity in Virginia and in other States. The growth of the nationalist principle in the North, as evidenced by the rise of the Republican Party in 1856, brought the country face to face with the dire results which Mr. Tyler had always apprehended. The two nations constituting the Union grew more and more unlike, and to the social, industrial, and economic differences formerly existing were added violent sectional distrust and enmity. The election of Lincoln, a Northern man, by Northern States and upon a platform which, in defiance of a recent decision of the Supreme Court, denied the right of a Southern man to go with his slaves into any of the territories secured by the common blood and the common treasure, was construed by the Southern States as a Northern monopoly of political and economic power. Deeming the Union under all these circumstances, to have become a positive failure, and asserting the natural right to independence, based on the vast extent of their Southern territory, and a population three times as great as that of the original colonies, they ap pealed to the words of the Declaration of Independence and to their reserved rights under the Constitution, and prepared for peaceable separation. 41 In this emergency Mr. Tyler, who had a sincere attachment to the Union of the Fathers, repeated the part which he had played in 1833. He tried to save the Union by peaceful means, but was unsuccessful. Upon the secession of South Carolina, after Mr. Lincoln s election, his counsel and advice were sought by his people, and he was elected to the State Convention which met in Richmond, February 13, 1861. He was sent as Peace Commissioner to President Buchanan, and it was due to his patriotic efforts that the Peace Convention, of which he was chosen President, and whose purpose was to preserve the Union, was called to meet in Washington, February 4, 1861. The result of the deliberations of this conference took shape in an ambiguous proposition, which Mr. Tyler opposed, and which the Republican Congress rejected. Realizing after this that all compromise was impossible, Mr. Tyler advocated the secession of Virginia, and on the I7th of April, 1861, was elected a delegate to the Provisional Congress of the Con federate States, and was an active member of that body in Richmond. In the November following he was elected a mem ber of the Confederate House of Representatives, but died on January 18, 1862, before taking his seat in the latter body. During the period that he lived after the beginning of the War between the States, he suggested the system of gunboats devised for the Confederacy; and Commodore Matthew F. Maury, who mentions this fact, pays him the tribute of stating that his death was the heaviest blow sustained by the Con federate States during the first year of the war.* Time would fail for the rehearsal here of the opinions expressed of him by men of distinction and renown. Mr. Davis said of him that "he was the most felicitous among the orators he had known" ; Alexander H. Stephens said that "his State papers compared favorably in point of ability with those * Official Record of the Union and Confederate Navies, Series I, Vol. 6, p. 633. 42 of any of his predecessors" ; and Daniel Webster, and Henry S. Foote, and Henry A. Wise, and George Ticknor Curtis, and R. M. T. Hunter, and a host of other great men bestowed upon him the expressions of their admiration, respect, and regard. Concerning his general appearance, we have the report of the novelist, Charles Dickens. Recording in his American Notes an account of a visit to the White House, in 1842, he wrote of "his mild and pleasant expression" and of his "re markably unaffected, gentlemanly, and agreeable manners," and added that he thought that "in his w r hole carriage and demeanor he became his station singularly well." That he was a man of fine literary accomplishments is shown not only by his messages and private letters, but by his beautiful and eloquent addresses, among which may be mentioned his oration on the death of Jefferson, in 1826, his lecture at the Maryland Mechanics Institute in 1855, an ^ m * s discourse on the "Dead of the Cabinet," in 1856, in which he pays a tender tribute to Webster, Calhoun, Legare, Upshur, Gilmer, Spencer, and Wickliffe, his able associates in the conduct of the government of the United States. He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, where a large con course gathered to testify their pride in his greatness and their sorrow for his departure ; and in his funeral obsequies city and State and Confederacy alike took part. And now the Federal Government has erected this monu ment over his mortal body; but the significance of the act does not lie in the cost or the beauty of the monument itself. Its erection is unique in that it is the first monument to be voted by the Federal Congress to any man whose sense of duty im pelled him to take sides with the South in the stormy days of secession. Viewed in this light, this memorial shaft to John Tyler is the most impressive and significant of all memorial structures in the United States, for it is the first in which both North and South have freely joined, and it stands to the 43 world as the sign and pledge of a reunited country, and a tes timony that the passions of the past have perished. John Tyler, statesman and patriot, needs no eulogy. The austere epitome of his life and deeds can convey but an inade quate conception of his courage, his ability, his steadfastness, and his patriotic devotion to country. His dust reposes here beneath this monument, and on the page of history his fame itself is monumental. His name has been placed there, along side those of the great leaders of our epic story of Jeffer son and Madison, of Calhoun and Davis, and as long as the records of the republic shall endure he will be remembered and honored as one of its most illustrious sons. 44 FORM NO. DD6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKEL E T BERKELEY, CA 94720 21-IOOm.8, 34 Gaylord Bros., Inc. Makers Stockton, Calif. PAT. JAN. 21. 1908 50545 864,358 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY