John Tyler was the first vice president to succeed to the office of president on the death of his predecessor. William Henry Harrison's inaugural address was the longest in history. The weather conditions were bad on the day of his address, cold and rainy with sleet. As a result, Harrison contracted pneumonia and died one month later. The Constitution was somewhat ambiguous on the subject of succession in such cases until the 25th Amendment was passed. Article II, Section 1 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, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case or Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability... "
The precedent Tyler set—he moved into the White House and assumed the title and role of president-carried through until the 1960s. The United States has had the good fortune not to have the office of president vacated when there was no vice president, though there were numerous opportunities for that to happen.
John Quincy Adams was not pleased with the transition; he wrote in his diary:
At thirty minutes past midnight, this morning of Palm Sunday, the 4th of April, 1841, died William Henry Harrison, precisely one calendar month president of the United States after his inauguration. _
The influence of this event upon the condition and history of the country can scarcely be seen. It makes the Vice-President of the United States, John Tyler of Virginia, Acting President of the Union for four years less one month. 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 has been cast by the hand of Providence, unseen through the apparent agency of chance. To that benign and healing hand of Providence I trust, in humble hope of the good which it always brings forth out of evil. In upwards of half a century, this is the first instance of a VicePresident's being called to act as President of the United States. ...
Others in Congress besides John Quincy Adams were likewise unhappy with Tyler's bold, preemptive act in simply taking over the office of president. In the long run it was probably better, however, that Tyler behaved as he did; otherwise, the selection of a vice president could have become messy indeed.
(Six more presidents died in office after Harrison before the 25th Amendment went into effect: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, Roosevelt and Kennedy. In each case the vice president took over without any sort of rancor beyond the shock of the incumbent's death.)
In any case Tyler was probably better qualified than Harrison, having been governor of Virginia, chancellor of the College of William and Mary and a United States Senator. But Tyler was an "Old Republican." As a "nominal" Whig only, he had broken with President Jackson over the issue of nullification. As a states' righter, Tyler was bound to disagree with Henry Clay, leader of the Whig Party. Clay was miffed at having been denied the nomination for president and was in no mood to bow to the wishes of the new president.
Clay, who was now in the Senate, reintroduced his "American System" program shortly after Tyler took over. It called for repeal of the independent treasury, recreation of the Bank
Of the United States, distribution of profits from land sales and raising tariffs, which he hoped the West would back in return for roads, canals and other "internal improvements." He also favored allowing squatters to occupy and buy public land under a "Preemption Act."
Tyler signed several of Clay's bills, but he vetoed Clay's bank bill, and the Senate failed to override the veto. When Tyler vetoed a second bank bill, all his cabinet members resigned except for Secretary of State Daniel Webster, who was occupied with foreign problems. Tyler called bills containing amendments on other issues "wholly incongruous" and had no hesitation to use the presidential veto on other than constitutional grounds.
Anticipating a fight with Clay's Whigs, Tyler quickly appointed new cabinet members, and Clay tried to hold up Senate approval, but Tyler threatened to suspend government services until the Senate acted. In the end, all his appointments were approved. Whigs also introduced an impeachment resolution over the issue of Tyler's "legislation usurpation" based on the belief, despite Jackson's legacy, that the president may veto bills only on constitutional grounds. The argument was rooted in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." The Covode (Impeachment) Resolution failed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 127-84, meaning that if only 22 votes had gone the other way, Tyler would have been impeached. He would probably not have been convicted by the Senate, however, since that requires a two-thirds majority.
In the 1842 congressional elections, the Whigs lost power to the Democrats, and Tyler felt vindicated in his resistance to the Whig program. He was, however, a president without a party and had no chance of being reelected in 1844. Henry Clay resigned from the Senate to prepare for the presidential campaign of 1844, when he became the nominee of the Whig party.
Dorr's Rebellion. The movement for more democratic government led to serious problems in the state of Rhode Island in 1842. From colonial times, only property owners had been eligible to vote in Rhode Island, and by 1840, that meant that less than half of the adult male population could vote. A committee of disfranchised voters held a meeting and passed a "People's Constitution" providing for full white manhood suffrage in December 1841. The state legislature then called a convention to revise the state constitution but failed to extend the franchise, siding with the landowners, who were opposed to extending the vote to nonlandowners. The two separate groups held their own elections in the spring of 1842, which for a short time resulted in two governments within the state.
Supporters of extending the franchise elected Thomas W. Dorr as governor and controlled the northern part of the state. Samuel W. King was inaugurated at Newport in the Southern part of the state and declared the Dorr party to be in a state of insurrection. Both sides appealed to President Tyler for assistance, but he announced that he would intervene only if necessary to enforce Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution, which requires the United States to guarantee every state a republican form of government. Dorr's followers failed in an attempt to take the Rhode Island State Arsenal. After fleeing the state, Dorr later returned, was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was granted amnesty in 1845. In 1843 the state adopted a new constitution with more liberal voting requirements: Any adult male of any race could vote upon payment of a one dollar poll tax.
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