"The Tragedy" of John Tyler

So since the beginning of this blog I have shared with you what I am reading currently. I've decided that, as much as I can, when I'm done I will review the book. So here goes . . .

John Tyler: "The Accidental President"
by Edward Crapol

Prof. Crapol uses the word tragedy over and over in this book when describing John Tyler. In many ways, this books blows apart many preconcieved notions about America's place in the world before the Civil War, and the power of the presidency which, between Jackson and Lincoln, was considered at its lowest. Crapol's John Tyler is a dynamic man, brilliant, scholarly, aristicratic, and very much aware that he is the last of the Virginians. Tyler, as a youth, was mentored by Thomas Jefferson, and dear friend of his father (also named John Tyler, who himself was governor of Virginia and a respected jurist. Tyler comes right out of the blue bloods of Revolutionary Virginia. He was raised with all the airs and oppurtunity that brought with it. But Tyler was not provincial, and developed a keen sense of not only American affairs, but also those of the entire world.

His political career was typical. As the son of the Revolutlion, Tyler took his place first in the House of Delegates, then in the House of Representatives, then as governor, and senator. He was a prolifict Jeffersonian states-rights advocate.

The Jefferson strain in Tyler prevented him from ever becoming a true fire-eater. Crapol asserts quickly clearly that Tyler was a firm believer in slavery, and unlike Jefferson or even James Polk, Tyler made no arrangements for emacipation of his own slaves, and he consistantly supported the South. But Tyler had nuance. As a congressman during the Missouri crisis, Tyler espoused "diffusion," the theory that admitting more slave states will help slavery die by spreading out slaves and the institution will eventually die. During the Nullification crisis, then-Senator Tyler supported the South, but heartily voted in favor of the compromise Henry Clay hammered out. Crapol also shares us that Tyler spent much of his legislative career trying to end the slave trade in the Distict (Tyler, according to Crapol, came across a slave trading post in DC and become physically ill on the spot).

What Tyler brought to the presidency after Harrison died was a spread-eagle belief in America's national destiny. He was a strong advocate of territorial expansion, out of Jefferson school. Tyler did not go for more territory for provincial reasons, rather he believed in what Jefferson believed in, that the power and solvency of the Republic can only be continued through expansion. In a word, Tyler advocated "Manifest Destiny" before John L. O'Sullivan wrote those words several years later. Crapol maticulously talks about Tyler's foriegn policy achievements: opening China for the first time to trade which paid off immediatly, implamenting the Tyler Doctrine which spread the Monroe Doctrine over the Pacific Islands (Hawaii), the Webster-Ashburton tready that avoided war bettween the US and Britian, and then the annexation of Texas.

Domestically, Tyler was never the Whig the party wanted him to be. He was always intelletually closer to the Democrats, but despised the imperial Andrew Jackson. As President, Tyler often put aside his constructionist views in order to get things done. In securing the Webster-Ashburton tready, Tyler used federal dollars in a secret fund to spread a propoganda campaign in Mass. and Maine. He sent "secret' angents like Duff Green to Great Britian. While crippled domestically, Tyler took all the powers and more at his disposal when confronting international issues. All in all, Crapol gives us a fair account of ups and downs of Tyler's presidency.

Tyler's tragedy is the nation's tragedy. Like I've said, he was never a fire-eater, but his undying belief in slavery prevented him to taking the next sterp. He worked for compromise as a congressman and senator in 1820 and 1833. In retirement, Tyler frowned upon the 1850 crisis and once again spoke out, this time publically in the newspapers, for compromise. Tyler lived as if it were still the 18th century. He saw America as it was when he was a boy, and despite a fairly impressive record, intellectually he never could move forward, much like the country. That tragedy lead Tyler, in the end, to follow slavery, Virginia, and the culture of the South that made him who he was into secession; instead of understanding the full toll slavery had taken on the nation. It is very hard to understand southerners like Tyler. Fire-eaters like William Yancey and Edmund Ruffin and Robert Rhett may have been horribly wrong, but they were intellectually consistant. Men like Tyler, and later those like Jefferson Davis among others, are harder to figure out and Crapol does a good job at trying to disect his mind. A very good book. John Tyler carried tragedy from the beginning of his time in office. He accended through the death of a hero, his wife died, and two of his very closest friends and aides Thomas Gilmer and Ablel P. Upshur on the Princecton died. For the nation, Tyler oversaw a deeply divided nation, and Tyler's belief in expanding the slave Republic from sea to shinning sea was drapped in the glory of America, but drove to divide much of the country along sectional lines. Politcally, Tyler was not strong. He relied a core of Virginians that he surrounded himself (William Rives, Littleton Tazewell, Beverly Tucker, Gilmer, Upshur, and Henry A. Wise), but achieved little as Henry Clay and his vengeful Whigs prevented Tyler from doing anything at home. So it was on the internation scene that Tyler sought to make his reputation.

Mechanically, this is not a typical biography. This is not narrative history, life-to-death stuff. Rather, its a critical analysis of Tyler's public career. Crapol is incredibly fair to Tyler. He spends ALOT of time examining in deep detail all of Tyler's foriegn policy achievments from Hawaii and th Tyler Doctrine, Anglophobia that was deep in Tyler and the nation, opening China, Webster-Ashburton, and Texas. Its deep in detail, and at times jumps around a bit. But you get a good sense of what a Antebellum president did, and the power he actually had. Its a fresh look at what is not one of our best presidents, but in hindsight, Tyler's four years in office may have been some of the most important in the Antebellum Era, and Tyler himself was instraumental in every aspect of it.

Rating: ***1/2