This is why it’s enjoyable, informative, fascinating (choose your own descriptor) to read biographies. I’m currently reading a biography of James Polk who began his political career carrying the water for Andrew Jackson. His career coincided with numerous other familiar names of people whose names we recognize even if we’re fuzzy on details, men like Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun.
It was this 1844 incident in Tyler’s presidency that caught my attention. Tyler was among 400 dignitaries and friends invited for a Potomac cruise on the USS Princeton, a new steam frigate. The Princeton had three brand new 12-inch 27,000 pound cannon which the Commander was eager to show off.
Among those on board was a wealthy New Yorker named John Gardiner along with his two daughters. Tyler had taken a fancy for Gardiner's 20-year-old daughter Julia. The president's wife Priscilla had died from a stroke two years earlier while First Lady, the first person in U.S. history to die in the White House.
Captain Robert Stockton was thrilled to have this opportuity to entertain so many guests on his new gunboat and discharged the big guns would make it an even more memorable occasion. Long story short: when the third cannon was lit it exploded, killing a number of guests including John Gardiner himselr. Julia, hearing the news, passed out. Tyler, in what would surely have become a viral video today, whisked her up in his arms and carried her away to safety. Later the two were wed and she became his second First Lady. (Full account here on the History channel.)
John Tyler was the 10th President of the United States and the first to become president without being elected. He assumed office as result of death of a sitting president. William Henry Harrison had become the ninth president in .the 1840 election but died one month after taking office in early 1841. Some say Harrison caught the pneumonia that killed him by speaking for too long in inclement weather during his inaugural address.
What's interesting here is that the Constitution did not actually specify that vice presidents become presidents when a sitting president dies in office. Some believed that the VP becomes acting president or president. Tyler settled the matter by declaring that he was indeed president, which set a precedent until it was formalized with the 25th Amendment after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
EdNote: Harrison must have been a popular figure because in my genealogical line there is a Harrison Newman who was born about that time. (Years later, when U.S. Grant was a national hero, my great-grandfather Grant Newman was born and so named.)
Being the first vice president ever to become president, Tyler was dubbed the “Accidental President” and opinion was divided on how much power he should assume. When he used the presidential veto to block the creation of a U.S. Central Bank his entire Cabinet resigned (except Secretary of State Daniel Webster, who stayed on for a year to complete the treaty with Britain settling the Maine-Canada border). Tyler immediately assembled a new Cabinet.
Another bit of Tyler trivia: John Tyler holds the record of any U.S. president for the most children fathered (that we know of), 15 in all. Perhaps even more astonishing, as of 2026 (this year) one of Tyler's grandson's is still alive, even though he was born in 1790.
Tyler, a Virginian, was pro-slavery and a strong believer in Manifest Destiny, the concept that it was the mission and duty of the United States to conquer, redeem and re-make the West. In Tyler’s mind westward expansion essentially meant creating more slave states. By the time the Civil War commenced, Tyler had been elected to the Confederate House of Representatives. When Tyler died in January 1862, the Lincoln administration officially ignored his death.
Top of page: Official portrait of President Tyler by George Peter Alexander Healey.
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