John Tyler

John Tyler was the tenth president of the United States. He served from 1841 to 1845 after William Henry Harrison died in office — the years 1841–1845. He was a Virginia man. He started as a Whig, then became an Independent: the Whigs kicked him out, and he finished the job with no party behind him. It kicked him out of the party after he refused to take orders. Critics called him His Accidency because he became president only after Harrison died, not by winning the top job himself.

Tyler was the first vice president to become president when the president died. Some people said he should only “act” as president. Tyler insisted he was the full president. He took the presidential oath and moved into the White House. That stubborn choice is the Tyler Precedent: if the president dies, the vice president is president — full stop, not a substitute. Later presidents followed that example. He had no vice president. The Constitution then had no way to fill a vacant vice presidency, so the office sat empty.

The Whigs were furious because he vetoed the bank bills his own party wanted. They expelled him from the party. Congress then overrode a veto for the first time — Congress mustered the two-thirds vote to override it. At the end of his term, in 1845, he helped add Texas to the Union. He had 15 children with two wives, more than any other president. Years after the White House, during the Civil War, Tyler sided with the Confederacy. He died in 1862.