TYLER, JOHN (179o-1862), tenth President of the United States, was born at Greenway, Charles City county, Virginia, on March 29, 1790. He was the second son of John Tyler 1813), of English descent, governor of Virginia in 1808-11 and U.S. district judge in 1812-13. John Tyler the younger entered the grammar school of the College of William and Mary, at Wil liamsburg, in 1802, and graduated at the college in 1807. Two years later he was admitted to the bar. His public life began in 1811, when he was elected a member of the Virginia house of delegates. Here he served for five years, being chosen also in 1815 a member of the council of State. In 1813 he raised a company for the defence of Richmond against the British, but his command was not called into action and his military service was concluded after a month. From Dec. 1816 to March 1821 he was a member of the National House of Representatives. Believing firmly in the republican principles of Jeffersonian democracy, he opposed the demand for internal improvements and increased tariff duties. He declined to follow Henry Clay in the proposed recognition of the independence of the Spanish colonies in South America and in the Missouri Compromise legislation, and he condemned Jack son for his execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister in Florida. He declined re-election to the House in 1821 because of ill-health. In 1823-25 he was again a member of the Virginia house of delegates, and in 1825-27 was governor of the State. In 1827 he was sent to the U.S. Senate to succeed John Randolph, after having been unanimously re-elected governor. In I829-3o he also served as a member of the Virginia Constitutional Convention. His career as senator was marked by great independence of party, for his political ideas continued to be those of a thoroughgoing "strict constructionist." Believing protective tariff duties to be uncon stitutional, he voted against the "tariff of abominations" in 1828, and also against the tariff of 1832; but the compromise tariff of 1833, made necessary by the hostile attitude of South Carolina, owed its inception largely to him. His hostility to a high tariff policy, however, did not prevent his condemning the South Caro lina ordinance of nullification; and in the presidential election of 1832 he supported Andrew Jackson, to whose political principles and methods he was invincibly opposed, as the "least objection able" of the various candidates. His opinions never changed,
though he aligned himself with parties as they developed. In this way he became a Whig (1833), but agreed with the Democrats on State's rights and differed from them on nationalism. He sought to incorporate in a new code for the District of Columbia, in 1832, a prohibition of the slave trade in the district, at the same time opposing the abolition of slavery there without the consent of Maryland and Virginia, which had originally ceded the district to the United States. In the controversy over the removal of the Government deposits from the Bank of the United States he sided with the bank. In 1833 he was again elected to the Senate, not withstanding the criticism of his independent attitude and the wide approval of Jackson's policy in regard to the bank. In the election of 1836 he was supported as a candidate for the vice presidency by the friends of H. L. White of Tennessee, the Demo cratic candidate opposed to M. Van Buren, and received 47 votes, none of them from Virginia. When the legislature of Virginia in structed its senators to support Benton's expunging resolution, Tyler, admitting the right of instruction, could not conscientiously obey, and on Feb. 29, 1836, he resigned his seat. In 1838 he became once more a member of the Virginia house of delegates, and was chosen president of the Virginia colonization society, of which he had long been a vice-president. In 1839 he made an unsuccessful contest for the U.S. senatorship. In December of that year the Whigs nominated W. H. Harrison for President and Tyler for vice-president without issuing a platform. Tyler was nominated with the expectation that he would carry the South, and in the belief that his senatorial record was a declaration of principle. Harrison and Tyler each received 234 electoral votes and were elected. On April 4, 1841, one month after the inaugura tion, Harrison died, and Tyler became President. The detailed discussion of the events of his administration, 1841-45, belongs to the history of the United States (see UNITED STATES: History).