John Tyler was born into wealth and privilege on a Virginia slave plantation. (Incidentally, he was born just twenty miles from his future running mate William Henry Harrison.) His father Judge John Tyler was Thomas Jefferson’s roommate at William and Mary and was elected governor three times. John Tyler was educated at the prestigious College of William and Mary himself and went on to practice law.

Tall and slender, Tyler was warm and affectionate and had a keen sense of humor. He relished parties and preferred champagne to hard cider (even though hard cider was an integral part of his vice presidential campaign). He liked to dance the Virginia Reel and play the fiddle. He fathered 15 children, the most of any president. He had toddlers underfoot until he was in his early seventies. He was a good public speaker and a prolific writer of letters and political tracts. He loved books and frequently quoted Shakespeare. There were 1,200 books in his library at the time of his death.

In 1813, at the age of 23, he inherited land and 13 slaves when his father died. In the same year, he obtained additional slaves from his marriage to Letitia Christian. He probably owned several hundred slaves over the course of his lifetime. Unlike other presidents, he never freed a slave, not even in his will.

He was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates at the age of 21. Tyler went on to serve in the US House and Senate. He was the governor of Virginia in 1826.

President Jackson’s administration was okay with South Carolina’s act of censorship in confiscating anti-slavery mail. As senator, Tyler and other southerners resolved to punish anyone printing anti-slavery pamphlets with “condign punishment, without resort to any other tribunal.” Fortunately, the Williamsburg Resolution (which basically called for lynching abolitionists) was never carried out.

Tyler tried unsuccessfully to get slave auctions banned from Washington D.C. while in the Senate because he found them distasteful. He was opposed to the slave trade, but not slavery itself. He thought slavery was unfortunate, but he was economically and politically dependent upon it.

Tyler thought the gag rule (which prevented any discussion of slavery in Congress) was counterproductive, and didn’t vote on it. He resigned from the Senate because he refused to obey the Virginia legislature’s instructions to vote to expunge the censure of President Andrew Jackson.

When President Harrison died in 1841, he was the first president to die in office. The constitution was unclear on whether the vice president became president outright or was only acting president until an election could be held. Vice President Tyler set precedent by taking charge and behaving as if he were president. Some people still referred to him as Acting President even three years later, but he paid them no mind.

He surprised his fellow Whigs by vetoing the national bank and tariff legislation. The Whigs considered him a traitor. His entire cabinet resigned except for Secretary of State Daniel Webster. The Whigs kicked him out of the party, and tried to impeach him. (Tyler was the first president to be confronted with impeachment hearings in Congress.) He was so unpopular, he received several death threats.

He was critical of Jackson for exercising too much presidential power, but once Tyler was president himself, a strong executive suddenly wasn’t so bad.

Unlike the austerity and simplicity of John Quincy Adams’ lifestyle, Tyler’s White House had an aristocratic display of wealth, including slaves. There were rumors he fathered children with his slaves from journalist Joshua Leavitt, who was considered credible. A slave named John Tyler claimed to be his son. There was also a rumor of a slave named Charles Tyler who fled to England. (There are black people in Virginia today whose family legend says they were descended from Tyler, but no DNA testing has been done yet.)

Tyler stocked his cabinet with pro-slavery people and even sent an “ambassador of slavery” to England. Tyler believed the conspiracy theory that England wasn’t really interested in the welfare of slaves, but used abolitionists to try to destroy America.

In order to prevent England from freeing slaves as they had during the Revolutionary War, Tyler improved the navy. He also created the Naval Observatory.

Tyler refused to recognize Haiti, despite it being a US trading partner since the 1790s, due to his racism. In early 1845, the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic broke from the rest of Haiti and presented themselves as whiter than the other half of the island. They sought aid from America. Tyler jumped at the chance to destabilize the island. Towards the end of his term, there’s evidence he sent arms and military supplies.

British subject Alexander McLeod was charged with the murder of an American in the burning of the Caroline by New York state. Tyler was worried McLeod’s execution would start a war with Britain. The Constitution didn’t give the federal government authority over the case, so Tyler couldn’t prevent the execution, but he wanted to avoid war and promised Britain he’d get the law changed so this wouldn’t happen again.

Tyler used secret agents to determine Britain’s military strength, to sabotage Haiti, to promote slavery in Europe, and to convince Maine to settle its boundary dispute with Canada with a propaganda campaign and not provoke war with England. This last act violated state sovereignty, (Tyler is perhaps the first president to use public funds on a secret propaganda campaign) but was a major diplomatic accomplishment. He also worked with England to suppress the slave trade. (Jefferson had banned the slave trade, but Tyler actually did something to enforce the ban.)

McLeod ended up being acquitted and Tyler kept his promise to change the law. Even though he was a states right advocate, he saw the need for federal authority in some cases.

A few weeks later, tensions flared again when a slave revolt aboard the Creole led to slaves receiving their freedom in the British colony of the Bahamas. The British didn’t even return the slaves who’d murdered their captors. Tyler smoothed this over. A treaty was signed that in the future, US and Britain would extradite persons charged with crimes.

Despite being in favor of free trade, he compromised his principles and signed the highly protective tariff of 1842, probably to meet the desperate revenue needs of the federal government.

Oregon was under dispute between the US and England at this time. Tyler used delay tactics in negotiations with England while secretly sending hundreds of pioneers to settle Oregon.

Dr. Peter Parker recommended Tyler send a representative to China to end the Opium War. This didn’t happen, but two years later, Tyler did negotiate America’s first peace treaty with China which opened up trade.

The monarchy of Hawaii was heavily influenced by protestant American missionaries and merchants. They got King Kamehameha III to outlaw Catholicism on the island. The French were outraged and sent a frigate to blockade the islands. In July 1839, Hawaii once again allowed Catholics and gave tariff concessions to the French. The Americans were worried the French intended to take possession of the islands.

One of his American advisors, William Richards, created a Hawaiian constitution and bill of rights. Hawaii was an important center of the whaling industry and a gateway to trade with China.

Tyler was reluctant to meet with Hawaii’s dark-skinned ambassador or recognize Hawaiian independence (perhaps viewing it as another Haiti). He relented when it was pointed out Britain might colonize Hawaii if the US did nothing. The US recognized Hawaiian independence and promised not to take over the islands. The Tyler Doctrine promised America would protect Hawaiian independence and warned other nations not to attempt to colonize the islands. It extended the Monroe Doctrine to the Central Pacific.

Tyler wanted to annex Texas from his first day in office, but abolitionist sentiment was a barrier. Secretary of State Daniel Webster was also opposed. In May 1843, he forced Webster and other anti-Texas members of his administration to resign and kicked the Texas campaign into high gear. Since the Whigs considered him a traitor, he was a man without a party and needed to annex Texas to get reelected president. He promised favors to postmasters who would distribute his campaign biography.

American settlers in the Mexican territory of Texas had claimed independence from Mexico and wanted to become an American state. Tyler was worried Britain had plans to do away with slavery in Texas (they didn’t, but he didn’t believe them) and considered it urgent to make Texas a state before this could happen. Abolitionists were opposed to adding another slave state.

Mexico, which had been fighting the recently arrived Americans in Texas for the past eight years, said they would declare war if Texas was annexed, but Tyler didn’t believe them.

Tyler took a cruise on the Potomac aboard the frigate USS Princeton, a state of the art warship, along with his future wife Julia Gardiner and others. A wrought iron cannon called The Peacemaker was fired several times during the cruise. Eventually, the captain said no more guns tonight, but the secretary of the navy pulled rank and insisted on one more firing. Tyler stayed below deck to listen to his son-in-law sing, which may have saved his life.

The Peacemaker exploded and killed several people including his girlfriend’s father, Secretary of State Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Gilmer, Tyler’s slave Henry, and several others.

He’d lost two of his best friends. He comforted Julia and married her four months later. He was 54 and she was 24. They lived happily together for almost two decades and had seven children together.

The loss of Upshur and Gilmer delayed his Texas annexation plans. To prepare for a possible war with Mexico, Tyler deployed military forces to the Texas border without the knowledge of Congress. He wanted the treaty with Texas to be kept secret until after the Senate ratified it, but it leaked to the press. The document indicated the real reason to annex Texas would be to preserve slavery, not to help the economic interests of the country as a whole as Tyler wanted the public to believe.

The leading candidates for the Whig and Democratic presidential nominations (Tyler ran for reelection as a third party candidate), were opposed to annexation, as was Tyler’s own Secretary of Treasury John C. Spencer who refused to finance the naval force to the Gulf of Mexico. (He viewed it as illegal since Tyler didn’t get Congressional approval.)

The Democrats elected dark horse candidate James K. Polk instead of front runner Martin Van Buren. Since Polk was in favor of annexation, Tyler withdrew from the race and threw his support behind Polk. Polk barely won the popular election.

The annexation treaty failed to get 2/3 of the Senate. Tyler then called for a joint resolution which only required a bare majority. Congress argued over whether this was constitutional or not, but ended up voting to let the president decide annexation, assuming president-elect Polk would make the decision. (Polk apparently said he’d renegotiate the annexation to get Mexico’s approval and not make Texas a slave state.) However, Tyler surprised them by annexing Texas in his final days in office, making him responsible for starting the Mexican American War.

Although Tyler himself didn’t profit from admitting Texas into the union, many of his advisors were speculators and did profit, making his administration seem corrupt. In fact, annexation wouldn’t have passed the Senate except for the vote of Benjamin Tappan who was originally against, but changed his vote in order to get $50,000 in Texas bonds.

At a farewell party, he joked that people could no longer call him a president without a party. He retired to his Sherwood Forest plantation in Virginia.

There’s conflicting accounts regarding whether Tyler was a kind or harsh slave master. A white visitor claimed his slaves were uniformly happy, while a former slave claimed Tyler was cruel. He didn’t free his slaves upon his death. They trashed his estate after the Civil War, so it doesn’t seem like they liked him much.

When Lincoln became president-elect and southern states seceded, Tyler convinced President Buchanan not to take military action against the seceded states. He voted for Virginia to secede from the Union, negotiated terms for Virginia’s admission into the Confederate States of America, and got the capital of the Confederacy moved from Alabama to Virginia. He was representative-elect in the Confederate Congress at the time of his death in 1862, making him the only traitor president.

Except for Tyler’s mother-in-law, the rest of the Gardiner family was on the Union side, breaking the Tyler family apart. Virginia was also divided with West Virginia breaking off from the rest of the state and joining the Union.

Two of his fellow William and Mary classmates and native-born Virginians, General Winfield Scott (appointed general by Tyler) and Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, opposed secession and remained loyal to the Union. Crittenden pointed out that the slave states could have blocked any attempt to end slavery if they had remained with the union. Even Tyler’s former classmates considered him a traitor.