He kept Harrison's cabinet until his veto of the bill for a "fiscal corporation," as being opposed to State's rights, led to the resignation of all the members except D. Webster, who was bring ing to a close the negotiations with Lord Ashburton for the settlement of the north-eastern boundary dispute. Tyler opposed the recognition of the spoils system and kept at their posts some of the ablest of the ministers abroad. He stood, however, be tween the two great parties, without the support of either; Van Buren refused to recognize him as a Democrat, and the Whigs repudiated him, while, with Clay leading the majority in Con gress, harmony between that body and the executive was from the first impossible. The annexation of Texas, achieved just before the close of his administration, seemed to commend him for a second term, and in May 1844 he was renominated by a convention of Democrats, irregularly chosen, at Baltimore. The majority of the annexationists, however, would not support him, and he had further to meet the opposition of Van Buren, who had failed to secure the nomination in the regular Democratic Convention, and of J. K. Polk, the regular Democratic nominee. Tyler accepted the Baltimore nomination, but on Aug. 20 with drew from the contest. From this time until the eve of the Civil War he held no public office, but his opinions on political questions continued to be sought, and he was much in demand as a speaker on public occasions. In Dec. 186o when South Carolina adopted its ordinance of secession, Tyler, though sym pathizing with the State, took firm ground against disunion and exerted himself on behalf of peace. The legislature of Virginia appointed him a commissioner to confer with President Buchanan and arrange, if possible, for the maintenance of the status quo in the matter of Ft. Sumter, in Charleston harbour; but his efforts were unavailing. He was largely responsible for, and pre
sided over, the Peace Congress which assembled at Washington on Feb. 4, 1861, pursuant to a resolution of the Virginia legis lature. The constitutional amendment proposed by the confer ence did not meet with his approbation, and his action in signing and transmitting the resolution to Congress was merely formal. On Feb. 13, while in Washington on this mission, he was elected to the Virginia Convention at Richmond, and took his seat on March I. In the convention he advocated immediate secession as the only proper course under the circumstances. He continued to serve as a member of the convention until it adjourned in December, in the meantime acting as one of the commissioners to negotiate a temporary union between Virginia and the Con federate States of America. He was a member of the provisional Confederate congress in May 1861, when the capital of the Con federacy was removed from Montgomery, Ala., to Richmond, and was elected a member of the House of Representatives of the permanent Congress, but died on Jan. 18, 1862, in Richmond, before that body assembled.
His son, LYON GARDINER TYLER (b. 1853), graduated at the University of Virginia in 1875 and practised law at Richmond, Va., from 1882 to 1888, when he became president of the College of William and Mary. Among his publications, besides Letters and Times of the Tylers, are Parties and Patronage in the United States (189o) ; Cradle of the Republic (1900) ; England in Amer ica (1906), in the "American Nation" series and Williamsburg, the Old Colonial Capital (1908). He died Feb. 12, 1935.
The principal authority is Lyon G. Tyler, Letters and Times of the Tylers, Richmond, Va. (1884-96). A good sketch of Tyler is in Virginia Portraits (1924), by Armistead Gordon.