After graduation Tyler read the law with his father, a state judge at the time, and later with Edmund Randolph, former United States Attorney General. Tyler, like most Americans of his day, was anti-British, and at the onset of the War of 1812 he urged support for military action in a speech to the House of Delegates. After the British capture of Hampton, Virginia, in the summer of 1813, Tyler eagerly organized a militia company, the Charles City Rifles, to defend Richmond, which he commanded with the rank of captain.