page_title: Presidency of John Tyler
section_title: Appointment of Calhoun
hierarchical_section_title: Presidency of John Tyler / Annexation of Texas and abortive 1844 candidacy / Appointment of Calhoun
caption_attribution_description: English: "Uncle Sam and his servants", an anti-Tyler satire, lampooning the incumbent's efforts to secure a second term against challengers Henry Clay and James Polk. Signed: H. Bucholzer, published by James Baillie in New York, 1844.
context_page_description: The presidency of John Tyler began on April 4, 1841, when John Tyler became President of the United States upon the death of President William Henry Harrison, and ended on March 4, 1845. He had been Vice President of the United States for only 31 days when he assumed the presidency. The tenth United States president, he was the first to succeed to the office intra-term without being elected to it. To forestall constitutional uncertainty, Tyler took the presidential oath of office on April 6, moved into the White House, and assumed full presidential powers, a precedent that would govern future extraordinary successions and eventually become codified in the Twenty-fifth Amendment.
  Although nominated for the vice presidency on the Whig Party ticket, Tyler differed from his party on several issues. A strict constructionist, Tyler found much of the Whig platform unconstitutional, and he vetoed several bills favored by party leader Henry Clay. Among the bills vetoed by Tyler was a measure to re-establish a national bank. In response to these vetoes, most of Tyler's cabinet resigned, and Whig congressmen expelled Tyler from the party.
context_section_description: In early March 1844, Tyler appointed Senator John C. Calhoun as his Secretary of State. Tyler's good friend, Virginia Representative Henry A. Wise, wrote that following the Princeton disaster, Wise went on his own to extend Calhoun the position through a colleague, who assumed that the offer came from the president. When Wise went to tell Tyler what he had done, the president was angry but felt that the action now had to stand. Though Tyler had long been hesitant to bring the ambitious Calhoun into his cabinet, some historians have cast doubt on Wise's interpretation of events. Regardless of Tyler's motivations for appointing Calhoun, the decision was a serious tactical error that ruined any hopes Tyler had had for establishing his own political respectability. Calhoun favored Texas annexation and had a strong following in the South. But in the eyes of Northerners, Calhoun was the symbol of Nullification and efforts to extend slavery, and his appointment undercut Tyler's attempts to disassociate the issue of Texas from the issue of slavery.
  In April 1844, Calhoun and two Texas negotiators signed the treaty providing for the annexation of Texas. When the text of the annexation treaty was leaked to the public, it met opposition from the Whigs, who would oppose anything that might enhance Tyler's status, as well as from foes of slavery and those who feared a confrontation with Mexico, which had announced that it would view annexation as a hostile act by the United States. Both Clay and Van Buren, the respective frontrunners for the Whig and Democratic nominations, decided to come out against annexation. Knowing this, when Tyler sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification in April 1844, he did not expect it to pass.
caption: An anti-Tyler satire lampoons his efforts to secure a second term. Tyler pushes the door shut on opponents Clay, Polk, Calhoun, and Jackson, as Uncle Sam demands that he let Clay in.
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