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President John Tyler LS 1842

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:1,000.00 USD Estimated At:0.00 USD
President John Tyler LS 1842
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Exceptional political-content John Tyler letter signed as President. 2pp., octavo, dated 30 May 1842, [Washington, D.C.] to James I. Roosevelt, a Democratic Congressman from New York, and the great-uncle of Theodore Roosevelt. Tyler writes in full: “My Dear Sir: / The two letters of Mr. Chute and Mr. Hassing I have referred to Mr. Howard that being all that I can now do. Mr. Chute writes as a Freeman and shows himself to be a true party man. Both parties make war upon me. I am ‘a president without a party’. So the contingency of a party convention cannot concern me as alluded to by Mr. Chute. / With great regard / J. Tyler.” John Tyler, a fiercely independent politician whose opposition to Andrew Jackson brought him into the fold of the Whigs, resigned from the U.S. Senate in 1836 rather than cast a vote in Jackson’s favor. Though Tyler's independence cost him his seat at the Senate, it won him the favor of the Whig Party, which proposed him as the Vice Presidential running mate for ''Old Tippecanoe,'' war hero and statesman William Henry Harrison in 1840. Under the slogan of ''Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too!'' the Whig campaign promoted its candidate's frontier background and Indian War exploits successfully, Harrison beating incumbent Democrat Martin Van Buren. While the Whigs had favored Tyler for the Vice Presidency and exploited his background to pull in votes from Southern Democrats, the party never anticipated the maverick politician being in a position of power in the White House. The sudden death of President Harrison on 4 April 1841 put Tyler in precisely that position. When Harrison succumbed to pneumonia he contracted during his own inaugural ceremonies, there was neither a Constitutional nor legislative provision or procedure established for the replacement of a deceased President. While a faction led by John Quincy Adams moved that Tyler's powers should be limited to those of a Vice President acting in the absence of the president, Tyler, however, defied his opponents and detractors who dubbed him ''His Accidency'' by moving from Williamsburg into the White House, taking the oath of office, and even issuing an inaugural address. Though Harrison in his brief role as president had been dominated by members of his Whig party, Tyler had no intention of serving the whims of Whigs or Democrats. Maintaining his opposition to the formation of a national bank, one of Tyler's first assertions of his authority was the veto of two bills for the charter of such an institution, vetoes which inspired the resignation of the entire cabinet he inherited from Harrison, with the exception of Secretary of State Daniel Webster. The vetoes so incensed the Whigs they expelled Tyler from the party, and when he next vetoed a Whig sponsored bill for tariffs, the Whigs in Congress, led again by John Quincy Adams moved for Tyler's impeachment on basis of abuse of veto power. The impeachment resolution failed, however, and Tyler, though a president without a party, managed to successfully enact important legislation. A fantastic letter from Tyler, in which he himself utters the phrase that would forever be associated with his Presidency – a “president without a party.” In fine condition.