In this 2006 monograph, originally submitted as a seminar paper, I attempt to untangle the many strands of legend surrounding the United States’ first presidential vacancy, the 1841 death of the new president, William Henry Harrison, and Vice President John Tyler’s controversial claim that he was entitled to the whole of the presidential office.
On February 10, 1967, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified. The amendment addressed a number of pressing though long-neglected issues that had become impossible to ignore in the nuclear age. Section 2 provided a means of filling a vacancy in the vice presidency, a problem that had gone unresolved for nearly two centuries despite more than a dozen such vacancies amounting to a total of nearly forty years. Sections 3 and 4 set forth methods by which presidential disability might be determined, either by the president himself or by others, and provided for the vice president to serve as “acting president” under specific circumstances. Compared to these critically important and timely provisions, Section 1 seems, at first glance, a curiosity. It reads, “In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.”[1]
Section One’s mandate might puzzle a casual acquaintance of presidential history. Have not vice presidents always succeeded to the presidency when that office has become vacant? They have, though it is widely held among constitutional scholars that the Framers of the Constitution did not plan it that way. Historians believe, instead, that the Framers intended the vice president to simply “act” as president, until a new president is chosen. Thus, for most of our history, the right of the vice president to become president, when a vacancy occurred in that office, was not a matter of constitutional law, but of tradition and precedent.[2]
The origin of this critical constitutional precedent lies in events that unfolded over just a few weeks in the year 1841, a period so remarkable that in it the United States had three presidents in thirty-one days. This historic episode, marked by drama and colorful legend, began with the illness and unexpected death of President William Henry Harrison, only one month after the beginning of his term, and culminated in Vice President John Tyler’s emphatic claim that Harrison’s death had made him nothing less than the president of the United States.
Though his presidency was brief, William Henry Harrison’s road to the White House was long and arduous. In 1836, Harrison: soldier, statesman, aristocrat, and genuine folk legend, was one of several candidates who tried to defeat the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Martin Van Buren, President Andrew Jackson’s handpicked successor. Jackson had dominated national life for a dozen years, and the Whigs were desperate to unseat his political heir. The divide-and-conquer strategy failed, however, and Van Buren won the election. Four years later, In 1840, the Whigs believed that only a single candidate, with an image similar to that of Jackson, could prevent Van Buren’s reelection. The party, therefore, united behind the sixty-seven year-old General Harrison, despite his vague political positions and his sometimes precarious health.[3]
As an afterthought, the Whig National Convention, meeting in Harrisburg, named John Tyler of Virginia the party’s vice presidential candidate. Tyler was a curious choice made in the name of political expediency. As a southern planter and a rather extreme advocate of “states’ rights,” he had been a member of the Democratic Party for most of his life. When Jackson took a firm stand against the South, during the Nullification Crisis of 1832, Tyler abandoned the Democrats and became part of the southern wing of the many-faceted Whig movement. Since more than fifty years had passed without a vacancy in the presidency, the vice presidential ticket seemed to the Whigs a safe station from which the former Democrat Tyler could placate the South and help secure Harrison’s election.[4]
President Martin Van Buren, re-nominated by the Democrats, had spent the previous three years mired in the fallout of the economic panic of 1837. Embattled by unfair and inaccurate accounts of his elegant lifestyle and even more inaccurate depictions of “Old Tippecanoe” Harrison as a “common man” (though a rough and tumble military man, Harrison was a Virginia-born aristocrat who had once studied medicine), Van Buren had little hope of winning. Late in 1840, voters and the electors chose Harrison and Tyler as the first Whig president and vice president.[5]
The 1840 campaign had been the most tumultuous in history up to that time, and Harrison had traveled many hundreds of miles. As president-elect, he had little opportunity to rest or recover. After the election, he traveled throughout Kentucky and Ohio and then made the long trek east to Washington. Harrison arrived in the District of Columbia on his sixty-eighth birthday, February 9, 1841. Even then, the traveling did not stop. He left the capital and made a trip into Virginia, to visit his birthplace and the graves of his parents. In Richmond, he met with Vice President-elect Tyler before returning to Washington, where, on March 4, he attended Tyler’s subdued inaugural ceremony in the Capitol. He then went outside to the east steps, where the atmosphere was anything but subdued, and took the presidential oath of office.[6]
In explaining Harrison’s subsequent fate, historians have made much of the weather on March 4 and have sometimes described the sixty-eight–year–old Harrison as delivering his inaugural address in damp, rainy conditions or even in sleet. The National Intelligencer, however, described no such inclement weather, and Benjamin Perley Poore, in his Reminiscences, said, “The weather was mild, and the streets were perfectly dry.” One later writer even described the weather as “beautiful.” Still, nearly all accounts portray Harrison delivering the speech, the longest inaugural address in US history, without hat or coat, and even Poore acknowledged “the cold northeast wind,” which caused the audience, “although warmly wrapped,” to suffer “from the piercing blast.”[7]
Whatever the effect of the inaugural weather on his subsequent condition, by late March, Harrison had begun to deteriorate, physically. Whig office-seekers, whom the Democrats had shut out of the political spoils for a dozen years, now sought to take advantage of the change in leadership. In that day of almost nonexistent presidential security, they harassed Harrison with endless appeals for patronage. “The job seekers pack the White House every day,” wrote the president. “They pursue me so closely that I cannot even attend to the necessary functions of nature.” Unknown citizens seeking low-level government posts were troublesome enough, but Harrison faced a more trying problem. Important Whigs used their even easier access to the president to demand patronage for their friends and families, clamoring, at the same time, for the dismissal of long-entrenched Democrats. One member of Congress, who claimed to have been present at a meeting between the president and Whig leaders, provided a rare glimpse of official business in the Harrison White House:
These men were urging the indiscriminate discharge of Democratic officeholders. . . . at length Gen. Harrison started up, and with a warmth and energy he rarely exhibited, he extended his arms, exclaiming at the same time, ‘So help me God, I will resign my office before I can be guilty of such iniquity.’ After they were gone the President turned to me and remarked, . . . ‘The Federal portion of the Whig party are making desperate efforts to seize the reins of government. They are urging the most unmerciful proscription, and if they continue to do so much longer, they will drive me mad!’[8]
After Harrison’s death, the National Intelligencer, a Whig paper, would accuse its Democratic rival, the Washington Globe, of manufacturing horror stories of the dying Harrison crying out in delirium for relief from the patronage seekers and even pleading forgiveness from those Democrats who had been “put out.” Harrison’s doctors, in their official reports, made no mention of such appeals, suggesting that these stories, which, like others, writers sometimes recount as fact, were mere political propaganda intended to embarrass the Whigs by implicating them in the death of their own leader. Still, while Harrison’s enemies may have contrived these deathbed images, there is no question that people tormented him with requests for office. Nearly all nineteenth-century presidents faced this problem (Garfield, literally murdered by an office seeker, is a singular example), and Harrison’s doctors would attribute his illness, in part, to fatigue due to “the reception of company.”[9]
On March 26, the White House summoned Washington physician Thomas Miller to converse with Harrison. The president told the doctor that he had not felt well in several days, naming “fatigue and mental anxiety” as the causes, and indicated that he had been taking medicine, or, as Miller called it, “acting as his own physician.” Seemingly little concerned with his current ailment, Harrison said that he had called the doctor primarily to discuss “some of the peculiarities of his constitution, which he thought it important that his physician should be aware of.” Harrison named dyspepsia (indigestion) and neuralgia (headaches) as lifelong ailments but said that he had long controlled both through diet and sleep habits. Miller told the president to rest and to cut back on his work, promising that he would return later in the evening. When the doctor saw Harrison three hours later, the president was chatting with old friends and said that he felt much better.[10]
Seventeen hours later, Miller again made the trek to the White House, to find the president in bed and ailing from a chill that had struck him after an early morning walk to the market, a walk he took, it seems, despite his illness of the previous evening. Weather continued to play a supporting role in the unfolding presidential drama. Rumors spread that Harrison had gotten a haircut on March 25 and had then walked out in the cool air, presumably with uncovered head, catching a cold or perhaps worsening the cold that some say he contracted on inauguration day. His subsequent walk to the market, on March 27, would eventually evolve, in popular legend, into a shopping trip for vegetables. Despite the idyllic appeal of the image, it is unclear whether the President was stocking the White House kitchen or just getting exercise. Either way, some accounts say that he walked home in an unexpected cold rain.[11]
Miller’s treatment on this visit consisted primarily of common-sense efforts to make the president warm: more bed covers, hot beverages, and a mustard compound to warm the skin. Later in the afternoon, the doctor again returned to find his patient improved, though troubled by digestion difficulties. Harrison complained repeatedly of constipation, and Miller, a homeopath, administered medication that he described as “R. Mass hydrarg., gr. X.; ex. Colocynth. Comp. gr. Iij.M. Ft. pil. No. iij.” These were extracts of the herb “bitter apple,” also known as “bitter cucumber,” and a mercury compound. Remarkably, Harrison approved of this esoteric course of treatment, stating that this particular compound “always acted kindly.”[12]
At 4:00 on the morning of March 28, Miller returned to the White House yet again, to find his patient in severe pain and suffering from a host of ailments. Thereafter, Harrison remained in bed. By March 31, the press had taken notice. The National Intelligencer reported, “Rumor having already spread the news of the indisposition of the President, it is deemed proper to say here, from information which may be relied upon, that he was attacked on Saturday last by a severe Pneumonia, which, we are gratified to learn, had, at a late hour last evening, been in a great measure subdued.” This report of improvement was typical; it was also mostly incorrect. In reality, Harrison had not improved, and Miller had called in a number of other physicians. Former president John Quincy Adams, now a Massachusetts congressman, seemed suspicious of the varying reports of Harrison’s condition when he wrote in his diary on April 2, “The condition of the President’s health is alarming. . . . The porter at the door [of the White House] answers all enquirers, that he is better; while Mr. Chambers and Mr. Todd report that there is no change, and the physicians agree to answer all alike.”[13]
While citizens high and low pondered the truth about Harrison’s condition, the White House became a whirlwind of activity, as the suffering president endured a veritable buffet of the worst of mid–nineteenth–century medicine. The treatments came randomly and without letup or mercy. A complete catalog of these “horrors” includes: enemas, mustard plasters, “Seidlitz powder,” more enemas, more complex homeopathic mixtures, laudanum in the rectum, more pills, “cupping,” “Granville’s lotion,” “blistering,” more laudanum, calomel, more laudanum, castor oil, demulcents, more blistering, more pills, brandy, “serpentaria and seneca,” “wine whey,” more pills, more concoctions, more blistering, “aromatic spirits of ammonia” (which the patient summoned the strength to resist after the first treatment), more laudanum, camphor, opium, “squill, morphia and Tolu,” more brandy, more laudanum, starch, “kino injection,” more camphor, more laudanum, and a turpentine bath. All the while, government officials, friends, and the few members of Harrison’s family who had reached Washington, waited outside the bedroom “in disbelief and a kind of terror.”[14]
Around 8:30 on the evening of April 3, Harrison stirred and pronounced some of the most dramatic and appropriate last words in presidential history. “Sir,” he said, his words seemingly directed at no one in particular, “I wish you to understand the true principles of the government; I wish them carried out, I ask nothing more.” Though the quotation strains credulity, witnesses said Harrison pronounced it loudly and clearly in the presence of Dr. N. W. Worthington, a Georgetown physician, who wrote them down immediately, and Mr. Samuel D. Naughan, whose duties Dr. Miller described as “cupper, leecher, &c.” For the next four hours, the doctors continued their treatments, even while privately concluding the case “hopeless.” At 12:30 A.M. on April 4, 1841, William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States, died. He had been in office for thirty-one days. [15]
In June 1841, the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, a forerunner of the New England Journal of Medicine, published, without comment, Dr. Miller’s detailed account of Harrison’s illness and death. Two months later, the same publication featured a scathing critique of Harrison’s medical care, concluding that his doctors had behaved in an incompetent manner. “We despise that spirit of fault-finding, that sees no good in anything;” the unsigned article opined, “but justice requires that we should openly condemn what our judgment disapproves.” The article charged that portions of the official report seemed to be little more than an “apology” for the unsuccessful results of the many treatments. It further found that the medical treatments themselves lacked any focus or consistency, often contradicting each other. Significantly, the critique concluded by rebuking one of Dr. Miller’s pessimistic assertions about the overall state of Harrison’s health, an assertion that may have been responsible for some of the many legends that are now associated with his short presidency. Miller concluded that Harrison probably could not have been saved, being exhausted, he said, by “fatigue attendant on his inauguration, and his official duties subsequent thereto.” To this, the Journal asked,
Who that saw his manly carriage, his rich color, and was acquainted with his frugal and active habits; who that listened to his full, strong voice, even after protracted effort, or beheld his hale old age, would have supposed him the worn-out, broken-down being, weak and decrepid [sic], that is here depicted? From appearances and facts, one would, on the contrary, have adjudged him a constitution like an old oak, over whose head many storms and winters had passed, but still standing proudly erect, strong and unscathed.[16]
In 1941, the centenary of Harrison’s death, James A. Green published his biography, William Henry Harrison: His Life and Times. Compared to the critics in 1841, Green was less florid in his condemnation of the president’s medical care and rejected the twentieth-century view that Harrison’s doctors had done the best they could at the time. “‘So worn out,’” he wrote, “and yet they bled, cupped and blistered him, gave him calomel and castor oil and rhubarb! Even in that day there were forward-looking physicians who realized that murder had been committed in the name of medicine.” This echoed the earlier critics who concluded that the doctors had been in something of a panic and were simply performing every medical procedure that they knew, making their patient worse and perhaps even lying about it.[17]
If the care Harrison received was obsolete and may have contributed to his death, it had little effect on later presidential medical crises. William Seale wrote that, nine years later, when President Zachary Taylor lay dying, the White House again summoned Miller. “Dr. Miller was there,” wrote Seale. “The violent accusations of a decade before, that this same Dr. Miller bled General Harrison to death, made little impression on Harrison’s successors. He was still ‘family doctor’ to the Presidents and would remain so for another decade.”[18]
In more than fifty years since the inauguration of the Constitution, no president had died in office. There were no precedents, no clear lines of authority, and there was considerable indecision about how best to proceed. Harrison’s cabinet became the temporary center of gravity for the government. The cabinet members decided to send the chief clerk of the State Department, Fletcher Webster, the son of Secretary of State Daniel Webster, to inform Vice President John Tyler of the president’s death. Webster, accompanied by Robert Beale, the doorkeeper of the Senate, traveled by train and boat to reach Williamsburg, and the speed with which they did so seemed impressive by the standards of the day. They reached Tyler’s plantation about thirty hours after their departure. At dawn, on April 5, they knocked on his door. When the vice president answered, the men explained that they had an important dispatch from the cabinet, and handed him a letter that, unknown to Tyler, the Washington National Intelligencer had already published. The message read,
Washington, April 4, 1841,
John Tyler,
Vice-President of the United States,
Sir: It has become our most painful duty to inform you that William Henry Harrison, late President of the United States, has departed this life.
This distressing event took place this day at the President’s mansion, in this city, at thirty minutes before 1 in the morning.
We lost no time in dispatching the chief clerk in the State Department as a special messenger to bear you these melancholy tidings.
We have the honor to be, with the highest regard, your obedient servants,
DANIEL WEBSTER,
Secretary of State.
THOMAS EWING,
Secretary of the Treasury.
JOHN BELL
Secretary of War.
JOHN J. CRITTENDEN
Attorney-General.
FRANCIS GRANGER,
Postmaster-General.
No one knows Tyler’s immediate thoughts upon hearing of President Harrison’s death. By some accounts, he did not even know that the president had been ill. Whether or not he had forewarning, the gravity of the situation must have made for a stunning moment. [19]
A number of popular myths have grown up around this early morning encounter at John Tyler’s door. One such story holds that Tyler began to cry when he learned the news. Robert Seager II dismissed this, asserting that “Tyler scarcely knew Old Tippecanoe; what little he did know he did not much like.” By far, though, the most enduring of the legends is that the two government messengers found Tyler literally on his knees, in the unlikely position of having just lost to his sons in a game of marbles. The “marbles story” has proved remarkably durable, though Seager dismissed it as well, saying that its origin was “anyone’s guess.” Oliver Perry Chitwood attributed the legend to Tyler’s friend, William S. Peachy. Though acknowledging the “eminent authority” behind the tale, Chitwood pointed out the improbability of the vice president of the United States “playing marbles at sunrise with his sons, two of whom were grown and married and only one of whom was of marble age.” No clear contemporary evidence supports this colorful story, and probably no serious Tyler biographer has ever believed it, though it regularly appears as fact in popular histories and in television documentaries.[20]
Through the fog of marbles and other myths, one clear truth emerges. Whatever else Tyler was thinking on the morning of April 5, it seems certain that he immediately regarded himself as president of the United States. Others were not so sure. Divisions formed quickly, and confusion reigned, as the untried engines of presidential succession sputtered to life. Awaiting Tyler’s arrival in the capital, even the great Daniel Webster seemed uncertain how best to proceed. As word of Harrison’s death spread, he asked William Carroll, the clerk of the Supreme Court, to write Chief Justice of the United States Roger B. Taney, asking him to come to Washington to advise the cabinet “at this most interesting moment.” Taney, believing the request somehow improper, perhaps even illegal, declined to come, absent an official request from Tyler or the cabinet as a whole.[21]
With even the nation’s ranking constitutional jurist refusing to address the unfolding crisis, the outcome seemed likely to turn on whatever Tyler might do next. Across the country, people anxiously wondered what that would be. An editorial in the Pennsylvanian expressed hope that officials would resolve all questions with only the best interests of the country in mind. “The death of the president will call into application certain parts of the constitution of the United States for the first time,” said the writer. “We anticipate no difficulty: but should any arise, we trust that it will be disposed of in the spirit of candor and forbearance, so that the great instrument of our national union may be maintained inviolate, and that a precedent equally wise, just and safe may be set for our posterity.” [22]
“Difficulty” was arising, and by April 6, clouds were already forming for Tyler in Washington, as powerful figures quickly sized up his status and his potential. As early as April 4, John Quincy Adams began to describe Tyler as “Acting President.” The former president confided to his diary:
Tyler is a political sectarian, of the slave-driving, Virginian, Jeffersonian school, principled against all improvement, with all the interests and passions and vices of slavery rooted in his moral and political constitution—with talents not above mediocrity, and a spirit incapable of expansion to the dimensions of the station upon which he as been cast by the hand of Providence, unseen through the apparent agency of chance. In upwards of half a century, this is the first instance of a Vice-President’s being called to act as President of the United States, and brings to the test that provision of the Constitution which places in the Executive chair a man never thought of for it by anybody.
Adams’s opinion of Tyler’s beliefs and abilities did not bode well, but his assessment of Tyler’s status portended serious trouble. Others, too, were uncertain of Tyler’s position. The cabinet had addressed its letter, written after Harrison’s death, to “John Tyler, Vice-President of the United States” (italics in the original). Announcements of funeral arrangements, also written by the cabinet, referred to him as “vice president.” It was a title that, in his own mind, he had left behind on his front porch.[23]
Along with two of his sons and the two government messengers who had awakened him, the man in whom John Quincy Adams reposed so little confidence departed before noon on April 5 for Washington. They arrived in the capital in the early morning hours of April 6 and took rooms at Brown’s Indian Queen Hotel. At noon, all the members of Harrison’s cabinet, with the exception of Secretary of the Navy Badger, arrived at the hotel and went into a closed conference with Tyler. The cabinet may have been attempting to dominate Harrison before his death; it is clear that it now hoped to dominate Tyler. Secretary of State Webster took the lead. Surprisingly addressing Tyler as “Mr. President,” Webster said, “I suppose you intend to carry out the ideas and customs of your predecessor, and this administration, inaugurated by President Harrison, will continue in the same line of policy under which it has been begun.” When Tyler made no reply, Webster followed by describing an arrangement that he claimed had existed within the Harrison administration. “It was our custom in the Cabinet meetings of the deceased President,” the Secretary of State told Tyler, “that the President should preside over them. All measures whatever relating to the administration were obliged to be brought before the Cabinet, and their settlement was decided by the majority, each member of the Cabinet and the President having but one vote.”[24]
This little-known exchange in a Washington hotel room marked a critical moment in American history, for the future power and independence of the presidency hung on what Tyler would do next. It is unknown whether the arrangement Webster described to Tyler had really existed within Harrison’s administration. It could have. The Whig Party contained many elements with many different agendas, yet the one thing on which they all agreed, the thing that had driven John Tyler into their fold, was disapproval of “King Andrew” Jackson’s policies. Whigs believed that the legislative branch, not the executive, should take the lead in setting the national agenda. Jackson had ground this principle under his heel for eight years, establishing what his opponents viewed as a monarchical presidency. Having finally maneuvered the Whigs to power in the person of the aged hero of Tippecanoe, it followed that party leaders, such as Secretary of State Webster and Senator Henry Clay, might attempt to dampen presidential authority, seizing for the cabinet a measure of executive power equal to that of Harrison himself. This cabinet-Senate nexus, if established, would have served Whig interests well. [25]
Some evidence suggests, however, that the policy Webster described was fiction, a subterfuge cobbled together in haste, in order to see how much power Tyler would claim, or, more importantly, how much power he would concede. Records show that, in one of the most dramatic acts of his short presidency, Harrison issued a stern rebuke, in writing, to Clay, reminding the powerful senator that he (Harrison) was president, and that he would sometimes make decisions without regard to Clay’s wishes. This exchange, coupled with Harrison’s reported outburst in the Cabinet Room in March, in which he proclaimed that he would resign before complying with the party leaders’ demands, suggests that if the cabinet and the party had intended to dominate the new president, their plans had likely gone awry after the inauguration. In claiming to Tyler that the president had submitted all questions to a cabinet vote, it seems that Webster was describing a frustrated wish rather than an accomplished fact. [26]
John Tyler, of course, could know none of this with certainty as he sat before a group of powerful men he now realized intended to rule the country through him. He had played almost no role in the Harrison administration and could have been but little acquainted with its inner workings. He did know, however, that just a few weeks earlier, in the Senate chamber, he had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Article II, Section 6 of that Constitution, he realized, stated, “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President.” “The Same,” as far as Tyler was concerned, referred to “the said Office” of president of the United States. This office had now “devolved” on him, making him President John Tyler. He had become president, even without his knowledge, at the instant of William Henry Harrison’s death. Tyler was not aware, perhaps, of a competing (and more accurate) school of thought that held that the antecedent of “the Same,” in Section 6, was “the Powers and Duties of the said Office,” not the office itself. Under this interpretation, Tyler remained vice president of the United States but was now to exercise the “powers and duties” of the presidency without assuming the grander title. This lesser interpretation, in the words of former President John Quincy Adams, made “the Vice-President of the United States, John Tyler, of Virginia, Acting President of the Union for four years less one month.”[27]
The conflict between the two interpretations of Article II, Section 6 sprang from the work of the 1787 Constitutional Convention’s Committee of Style, whose job had been turning the resolutions passed at the meetings into a usable document. This committee condensed two distinct and relatively clear provisions, indicating that the vice president was merely to “act” as president in case of a vacancy, into one ambiguous sentence, and no one, apparently, recognized the ambiguity at the time. The records of the Constitutional Convention, as well as of the various ratification conventions in the states, support the notion that the vice president was never intended to do more than act as president in a temporary capacity, but some of these records, notably the detailed accounts kept by James Madison, were not available in 1841. A half century of inactivity on the subject of presidential succession had rendered the topic confusing and obscure, at the very moment when the country most needed an intimate knowledge of it. [28]
As Tyler listened to Webster, it is impossible to discern, from the scant surviving evidence, whether he realized the historical gravity of the moment. Still, this highly independent and proud man must have sensed that his own destiny—whether he would wield power or, intolerably, serve as a conduit through which others would wield it—was at stake. When Webster had completed his assertion suggesting that the cabinet continue its “custom” of deciding matters by majority vote, Tyler, in a moment of high drama, rose and said:
I beg your pardon, gentlemen, I am very glad to have in my Cabinet such able statesmen as you have proved yourselves to be. And I shall be pleased to avail myself of your counsel and advice. But I can never consent to being dictated to as to what I shall or shall not do. I, as President, shall be responsible for my administration. I hope to have your hearty co-operation in carrying out its measures. So long as you see fit to do this, I shall be glad to have you with me. When you think otherwise, your resignations will be accepted.
No record of the cabinet secretaries’ immediate reactions is known to exist, but the events that followed suggest that, if there was protest, they quickly suppressed it in the face of Tyler’s surprising claim to the whole of the presidential office. [29]
Having clarified his position to the cabinet, Tyler now made a decision that he thought would enhance it with everyone. He believed that he had been president since shortly after midnight on the morning of April 4, more than two days ago by that point. He recognized, however, that in the future there would be debate about his legitimacy. Tyler knew that the presidential oath was one of the points of contention that might arise. Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution required all federal officials, and even all state officials, to swear an oath to support the Constitution. Congress had determined the text of the oath by law, and this was the oath that Tyler had taken in the Senate chamber on March 4. The president of the United States was the only federal official who did not take the oath prescribed by Congress. He had his own unique oath, prescribed by the Constitution itself in Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, and Tyler knew that the Constitution further provided that the president was to take this oath “before he enter on the Execution of his Office.” This realization placed Tyler in a dilemma. He not only believed himself president, but also believed he could act as such without taking any additional steps. He thought that the requirement of the oath applied only to one elected to the presidency, and not to one in his situation, who had been sworn in as vice president, and now found himself (in his view) elevated to the higher office. Nevertheless, to avoid any future dispute, he determined that it would be prudent to take the presidential oath, though he wished to make it clear that he did not feel compelled to do so in order to carry out his duties.[30]
Though the details of his arrival are not clear, at some point after the confrontational cabinet meeting at Brown’s, Judge William Cranch of the District of Columbia Circuit Court arrived and administered to Tyler the oath prescribed for the president in Article II. Afterwards, Tyler had Cranch write an affidavit that, along with the text of the oath itself, the National Intelligencer published. The affidavit read:
District of Columbia,
City and County of Washington, ss:
I, William Cranch, chief judge of the circuit court of the District of Columbia, certify that the above-named John Tyler personally appeared before me this day, and although he deems himself qualified to perform the duties and exercise the powers and office of President on the death of William Henry Harrison, late President of the United States, without any other oath than that which he has taken as Vice-President, yet as doubts may arise, and for greater caution, took and subscribed the foregoing oath before me.
- CRANCH
April 6, 1841.[31]
Tyler’s taking the presidential oath helped consolidate, in the public mind, the legitimacy of his full claim to the presidency. It was a decision with far-reaching consequences, however. William Manchester, in The Death of a President, pointed out that in years to come, though everyone remembered the oath Tyler took, no one remembered the affidavit that Tyler told Cranch to write, declaring that he had taken the oath merely “for greater caution.” As a result, said Manchester, people believed the oath was mandatory, and worse yet, that its administration marked the moment at which Tyler—and thus Fillmore, Johnson, Arthur, and others—actually became president. This, he concluded, had caused unnecessary preoccupation with a mere ceremony at moments of national crisis and had, at times, created an unnecessary and even dangerous impression of presidential hiatus. Tyler’s oath created a perceived, though legally questionable, obligation, on the part of future vice presidents, that would endure for more than a century. [32]
Though Tyler’s exact title was by no means certain, the rank and file of the Whig party initially embraced his leadership. Two days after the dramatic events in Brown’s Hotel, members of the party in Washington met and adopted a resolution calling upon all other party supporters to “rally around the standard of the constitution in the novel and interesting trial to which it is subjected; and to give their unanimous, vigilant, energetic support to the administration of president Tyler.” The next day, seeking to fortify his presidential image, Tyler took the rather extraordinary step of issuing an “inaugural address” of sorts, after which both he and the public became preoccupied with Harrison’s funeral and related solemn observances. The civil tone of the address enhanced his image with the public and the Whig party, and, like the oath, helped solidify his right to the presidency. On April 14, ten days after Harrison’s death, Tyler and his family moved into the White House. Though John Quincy Adams famously objected in his diary, after a personal visit to the White House, that its new occupant “styles himself President of the United States, and not Vice-President acting as President, which would be the correct style,” most Whigs came to the support of their new leader. [33]
If local partisans were satisfied in Tyler’s position, newspapers remained divided and confused for a time. Niles’ National Register reprinted an article from the Pennsylvanian discussing Tyler favorably but insisting that he was merely “acting as president.” A week later, the same paper addressed this as an “erroneous conception,” declaring that Tyler was,
to all intents and purposes, by the appointment of the constitution and by election, president of the United States; invested with the office proper of president, with as plenary right and authority as his predecessor, gen. Harrison; and exercises the powers of the office, not in his quality of vice president, but of president, the office of vice president being vacated by his accession to the office of president, or entirely merged in the superior office.
The Democratic papers, such as the Richmond Enquirer, continued to raise questions about the succession. Perhaps remembering, though, that Tyler had been a lifelong Democrat, they quickly suppressed questions about his legitimacy. Maybe now—as president, or acting president, or whatever he might be—he would revert to his former party’s principles and right the many perceived wrongs committed by the Whigs. In short, the whole affair quickly grew tiresome and seemed to lose momentum. On April 24, Niles’ Register likely spoke for many when it implored, “Title! May not the good people of this republic be spared from an idle controversy in regard to the appellation by which the person now at the head of its executive department shall be designated?”[34]
The initial public controversy over Tyler’s claim to the presidency died away so quickly because, from the public’s perspective, if not from Tyler’s, so little was at stake. After all, whether he was the president or not, it was clear that he was entitled to act as president, that is, to carry out the functions of the office. Ambitious government figures might have had reason to dwell on the distinction, but any public preoccupation with it would likely have worn thin in a relatively short time. Of those who had suggested that Tyler was a simple caretaker, few, if any, had taken the next logical step and suggested a special election. One way or the other, therefore, John Tyler, by whatever title, would head the executive branch until March 4, 1845. [35]
With the cabinet, the public, and even the press growing indifferent to the succession controversy, one last hurdle remained before Tyler could settle his hold on the office. In the early nineteenth century, Congress typically met for only a few months each year. Unless summoned by the president, the new Congress did not convene until December of the year following the presidential election, a full thirteen months after the public votes were cast. Presidents in general, and new presidents in particular, usually wanted congressional action much earlier in the year, so, typically, the president would call a special session to be held sometime in the spring. Even Old Tippecanoe, in his short tenure, managed to call such a session, summoning the legislators to convene on May 31, 1841. By that time, of course, Harrison was two-months dead, and Tyler was so fully established as president that even John Quincy Adams would soon begin to refer to him as such. It was unlikely that Congress, with its partisan divisions, would be so accommodating. [36]
When the Twenty-Seventh Congress convened, in accordance with the summons of the late President Harrison, trouble loomed for Tyler in both the House and the Senate. On both sides of the Capitol, the controversy erupted when members introduced the traditional resolution calling for the establishment of a small committee to “wait on the president of the United States and inform him that a quorum of the two houses had assembled, and that congress was ready to proceed to business.” In the House, Virginia Congressman Henry Wise introduced the bill, but immediately faced a challenge by Congressman John McKeon of New York, who wished to change the title in the resolution to “Vice-President, now exercising the duties of the President of the United States.” There was a brief debate, in which McKeon repeatedly denied that he was acting with any malice, and even stated that he intended to “vote for the regular salary of $25,000 attached to the Presidential office.” To this, Wise rose in defense of Tyler’s claim. “He knew,” recorded the Congressional Globe, “that the present incumbent would claim the position that he was by the Constitution, by election, and by the act of God, President of the United States. . . . [Tyler] had, with sentiments of deep sorrow regretted that the office had devolved upon him. But so it was.” At that, the House refused to vote on McKeon’s motion to change the language, and Wise’s resolution passed in its unmodified form.[37]
On the following day, June 1, the Senate took up the Wise resolution that had passed in the House. In normal circumstances, this would have been a routine matter. Again, the title used in the resolution was the crucial issue. Senator William Allen of Ohio sought to change it to “the Vice-President, on whom by the death of the late President, the powers and duties of the office of President have devolved.” The ensuing Senate debate consisted mostly of a discussion of English rules relevant to an interpretation of the ambiguous language of Article II, Section 6 of the Constitution. Finally, Senator Robert Walker of Mississippi rose in favor of the proposition that the office of president had devolved upon Tyler, and posed a clever question: “Is Mr. Tyler still the Vice President discharging additional duties?” he asked. “If so, why is he not here performing the duties of the Vice President? Could he come here and act as Vice President for a single moment? Surely not, because he has ceased to be the Vice President, for the reason that the Constitution has devolved on him the office of President, which office he holds for the entire term for which the President was chosen.” Shortly after Walker’s question, the Senate overwhelmingly defeated Allen’s amendment, with members from all political persuasions voting against it. Immediately, the Senate chose two members to join their two counterparts from the House in a committee to notify John Tyler, “President of the United States” of the opening of Congress.[38]
The passage of the notification resolutions in the two chambers of Congress constituted de facto recognition of Tyler as president of the United States and marked the end, for the most part, to objections based on purely constitutional grounds. Later in the year, Tyler stunned Whig leaders, to whom his ties were always tenuous, by vetoing a bill that would have created a new Bank of the United States, a critical component of the Whig program. For this, protesters burned Tyler in effigy before the White House. When he vetoed a second such bill, the Whig Party expelled him. The following year, he survived attempts to have him impeached. In the context of these political controversies, his enemies did sometimes attempt to resurrect the succession issue, but these were mere political contrivances. In a sense, their very existence, within the context of the politically charged atmosphere of the time, actually lent credence to his claim to the presidency. Whatever the intent of the Framers of the Constitution in 1787, by the summer of 1841, John Tyler, by circumstance, chance, and sheer force of will, was the president of the United States.
The tragic and probably unnecessary death of William Henry Harrison propelled John Tyler from relative obscurity to the center of a great controversy. He rose to the occasion in a manner consistent with his values and his views (apparently incorrect) of what the Constitution demanded of him. For this, William Manchester once observed, “John Tyler has much to answer for.” In the years after those tumultuous months, in early 1841, the “Tyler Precedent,” as it came to be known, became an established part of American Constitutional usage—what political scientists call an informal amendment. A mere nine years after Tyler’s extra-constitutional elevation to the presidency, President Zachary Taylor, another aging Whig general, died in office. When Vice President Millard Fillmore assumed the presidency, later that day (with the full support of Daniel Webster), there was little discussion or dissent. By the time of Abraham Lincoln’s traumatic murder and Andrew Johnson’s elevation to chief executive, fifteen years later, there was practically no dissent at all. Thereafter, it is unlikely that many Americans remembered that succession had ever been a legal controversy. [39]
How could any man, let alone one as reviled as John Tyler came to be, effect such a profound change in the Framers’ constitutional designs? Perhaps the finality of the precedent set by Tyler appealed to people’s need for certainty. The death of a president constitutes a national crisis. This crisis atmosphere was particularly acute in the spring of 1841, when the memory of Harrison’s triumphal inaugural had scarcely died away and before assassination had repeatedly traumatized the American people. Tyler’s actions, in 1841, provided a ready antidote to public fear while simultaneously protecting the presidency from degeneration into a functionary administrative post. Today, it is nearly impossible to imagine a long-term “acting president,” let alone a short-term one to be replaced by a confusing and divisive special election. For 126 years, the Tyler precedent provided continuity of government and stability for the American people at times when they badly needed both. That later generations not only accepted the precedent, but also embraced it and wrote it into the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, testifies to its lasting appeal and effectiveness.
Few events in American history have had as profound an effect on the presidency as the death of William Henry Harrison and the accession of John Tyler. For over 160 years, though, few writers have told this story in the detail attempted in this account. Textbooks and popular accounts usually say that Harrison made a long speech in bad weather, that he was browbeaten by office-seekers and his subordinates, that he went shopping for vegetables, that he became sick, and that he died. His 31-day tenure they portray, at best, as his most distinguishing characteristic, or, at worst, as ironic, or even darkly amusing, presidential trivia. They treat Tyler’s bold seizure of the presidential office with similar indifference. His portrayal is that of an ambitious man who one minute was playing marbles and the next was presented with the opportunity to take something he badly wanted—the presidency—and took it.
When the details come into focus, however, a different picture emerges. Harrison seemed strong at the time of his inaugural. He did not allow Clay or the Cabinet to bully him. He died a cruel death, and the performance of his physicians was widely condemned by the medical profession of the day, a fact that has made it into few, if any, accounts, short of a few major biographies. As to Tyler, there is no evidence that he acted purely, or even mostly, out of ambition. He undoubtedly believed that his interpretation of the succession provisions was correct, and we must not forget that many others believed it too.
Writers have told the short version of this story so many times that the accounts have all begun to sound alike. The short version, however, has stripped the events of March and April 1841 of their human drama. This account seeks to add detail, texture, and humanity to an event about which most of the facts are available. The details do matter. In the death of William Henry Harrison and the accession of John Tyler, the tragedy is not that the evidence is unavailable—that the whole story cannot be told—but that few have ever bothered to tell it.
[1] U.S. Constitution, amend. 25, sec.1.
[2] For a thorough discussion of this problem, see Everett S. Brown and Ruth C. Silva, “Presidential Succession and Inability,” Journal of Politics 11 (February 1949); and Leonard Dinnerstein, “The Accession of John Tyler to the Presidency,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, October 1962, 447-58.
[3] Robert J. Morgan, A Whig Embattled: The Presidency under John Tyler, rev. ed. (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1954; n.p. Archon Books, 1974), 3-6. Citations are to the Archon edition.
[4] Morgan, A Whig Embattled, 3-6.
[5] Michael Nelson, ed. The Presidency: A History of the Office of the President of the United States From 1789 to the Present (London: Salamander Books, 1996), 86.
[6] Washington National Intelligencer, 2 March 1841; James A. Green, William Henry Harrison: His Life and Times (Richmond, VA: Garrett and Massie, 1941), 390-391; John D. Feerick, From Failing Hands: The Story of Presidential Succession (New York: Fordham University Press), 89-90; Washington National Intelligencer, 5 March 1841.
[7] Washington National Intelligencer, 5 March 1841; Benjamin Perley Poore, Perley’s Reminiscenses of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: 1886; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1971), 251 (page citations are to the reprint edition); Ibid., 253-54; Oliver Perry Chitwood, John Tyler: Champion of the Old South (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1939), 200; Poore, Perley’s Reminiscences, 253-54.
[8] Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt, The American President (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), 21; Washington Madisonian, 8 July 1842; quoted in Lyon G. Tyler, ed., Letters and Times of the Tylers, vol. 2 (Richmond, VA: Whittet & Shepperson, 1885; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 11 (page citations are to the reprint edition).
[9] Washington National Intelligencer, 17 April 1841; Thomas Miller, M.D., “Case of the Late William H. Harrison, President of the United States,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 24, no. 17 (1841): 261-67; Poore recounts that Harrison made such pleas on his deathbed, but his quotations match exactly those criticized in the National Intelligencer, and he openly states, in an introduction, that his writing incorporates items found in Washington’s “whirlpools of gossip.” See Poore, Perley’s Reminiscences, 266, i; Miller, “Case of the Late William H. Harrison,” 267.
[10] Miller, “Case of the Late William H. Harrison,” 261.
[11] Miller, “Case of the Late William H. Harrison,” 261; Green, William Henry Harrison, 398; Apparently, Harrison, himself, told Dr. Miller of this early morning walk. See Miller, “Case of the Late William H. Harrison,” 262; Washington National Intelligencer, 5 April 1841; Poore also mentioned the walk to the market. See Poore, Perley’s Reminiscenses, 265; For an alternative view, suggesting that Harrison had already discontinued his morning walks because of office seekers, cf. William Seale, The President’s House, vol. 1 (Washington: White House Historical Association, 2000), 232.
[12] Miller, “Case of the Late William H. Harrison,” 262; M. Grieve, “Botanical.com: A Modern Herbal, www.botanical.combotanical/mgmh/c/colocy87.html; “Henriette’s Herbal Homepage,” http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/eclectic/potter-comp/hydrargyrum.html.
[13] Miller, “Case of the Late William H. Harrison,” 262;Washington National Intelligencer, 31 March 1841; Niles’ Register, 3 April 1841; Washington National Intelligencer, 31 March -3 April 1841; Miller, “Case of the Late William H. Harrison,” 263-64; Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795-1848, vol. 10 (Philadelphia: N.p., 1874; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1970), 254 (page citations are to the reprint edition).
[14] Green, William Henry Harrison, 398; Miller, “Case of the Late William H. Harrison,” 261-67; Seale, The President’s House, 232.
[15] Miller, “Case of the Late William H. Harrison,” 267; Ibid., 266; Ibid.; Ibid.
[16] Ibid., 261; “President Harrison’s Last Illness,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 25, no. 2 (1841): 25. Ibid., 31; Ibid., 28-32 passim; Ibid., 28; Ibid., 31-32.
[17] Green, William Henry Harrison, 400; “President Harrison’s Last Illness,” 30.
[18] Seale, The President’s House, 288.
[19] Niles’ National Register, 10 April 1841; Richmond Enquirer, 6 April 1841; Chitwood, John Tyler, 202-03.Washington National Intelligencer, 5 April 1841. A debate exists on this point. In the mid 1900s, a letter was discovered, dated April 3, 1841. It was written by James Lyons to John Tyler and told him of Harrison’s illness, making it clear that the president was unlikely to survive. The letter may have reached Tyler before the State Department’s messengers did. See Fred Shelley, “The President Receives Bad News in Williamsburg,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 76 (July 1968): 337-339. See also Stephen W. Stathis, “John Tyler’s Presidential Succession: A Reappraisal,” Prologue 8 (Winter 1976): 226n14.
[20] Robert Seager II, and Tyler too: A Biography of John and Julia Gardiner Tyler (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1963), 148; Ibid.; Ibid., 574n1 (chap. 7); Chitwood, John Tyler, 202-203n14; Noted writers are not immune to the allure of the “marbles” story. See William Manchester, The Death of a President: November 20—November 25 1963, (New York: Harper & Row, 1967; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 225 (page citations are to the reprint edition). In discussing Harrison’s death in the context of the Kennedy assassination, Manchester recounted the story of the marbles game as fact.
[21] Dinnerstein, “The Accession of John Tyler to the Presidency,” 448; Stathis, “John Tyler’s Presidential Succession,” 227; Bernard C. Steiner, Life of Roger Brooke Taney: Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1922), 257.
[22] The Pennsylvanian, n.d., reprinted in Niles’ National Register, 10 April 1841.
[23] Adams, The Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 456-457; Washington National Intelligencer, 5 April 1841; Ibid.
[24] John Tyler Jr., “A Talk with a President’s Son,” interview by Frank G. Carpenter, Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine 41 (March 1888): 416-417; Ibid., 417.
[25] Stathis, “John Tyler’s Presidential Succession,” 227.
[26] Robert Seager II and Melba Porter Hay, eds., The Papers of Henry Clay, vol. 9, The Whig Leader: January 1, 1837-December 31, 1843 (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1988), 514.
[27] Manchester, The Death of a President, 224-226; Tyler, Letters and Times of the Tylers vol. 2, 12; Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 456-457.
[28] Brown and Silva, “Presidential Succession and Inability,” passim; Dinnerstein, “The Accession of John Tyler to the Presidency,” 454-457; Manchester, The Death of a President, 224-226.
[29] Tyler, “A Talk with a President’s Son,” 418; Stathis, “John Tyler’s Presidential Succession,” 228.
[30] Manchester, The Death of a President, 226-28; See Cranch Memorandum, Niles National Register, 10 April 1841. Cranch wrote the memorandum at Tyler’s direction, clearly stating that he (Tyler) thought the second oath unnecessary.
[31] Niles National Register, 10 April 1841.
[32] Manchester was troubled by the common belief that there simply is no president until the vice president takes the oath. He favored the view, held by Tyler, that a vice president becomes president at the moment the president dies, the oath itself being a mere formality in such a case. Tyler, in fact, believed the oath unnecessary, but chose to take it anyway. Note that Section 1 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution settled the question by proclaiming that on the death, resignation, or removal of the president, “the Vice President shall become President.” The question of presidential hiatus and the necessity of the oath were, perhaps, of minor importance in 1841. Such was not the case in 1963, when the oath became a matter of national and presidential security. On November 22, 1963, following the assassination of President Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Air Force One remained on the ground in Dallas for over an hour because of conflicting legal advice about the importance of the oath. Manchester specifically blamed Tyler’s oath for this confusion at a moment when there could have been a mass conspiracy against the government. See Manchester, The Death of a President, 226, 269-76, 311-26; U.S. Constitution, amend. 25 sec. 1; On the oath question in general, see Brown and Silva, “Presidential Succession and Inability,” 239-41; Dinnerstein, “The Accession of John Tyler to the Presidency,” 448-49; Stathis, “John Tyler’s Presidential Succession,” 228;
[33] Niles National Register, 24 April 1841; J. D. Richardson, ed., Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), 5:1889-1892; Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 463.
[34] Niles National Register, 10 April 1841; Ibid., 17 April 1841; Richmond Enquirer, 6 April 1841; Niles National Register, 24 April 1841.
[35] Dinnerstein, “The Accession of John Tyler to the Presidency,” 449-450.
[36] Richardson, Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 5:1876; Adams, in his diary, referred to Tyler as “the President” at least as early as June 18, 1841, and did so consistently thereafter. See Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 482.
[37] Congressional Globe, 27th Cong., 1st sess., 5.
[39] Manchester, The Death of a President, 226; On Webster’s involvement see Brown and Silva, “Presidential Succession and Inability,” 240, 240n11.