President Without a Party

On May 20, 2021, J. Leahy presented a banner lecture on how John Tyler messed up on being president.

The first president to ascend to the office because of the incumbent’s death, John Tyler also remains the nation’s only chief executive to have been kicked out of his own political party. In September 1841, angry that Tyler’s use of the veto destroyed their legislative agenda, members of the Whig Party held a ceremony at the Capitol and formally banished him from their ranks. Tyler’s excommunication affected him personally, impacted his agenda, and destroyed his chances to win election in his own right in 1844. Portrayed by his contemporaries and by many historians as an ideologue whose rigid devotion to states’ rights and strict construction of the Constitution forestalled compromise and made him a failed president, Leahy instead argues that Tyler largely favored a middle-of-the road, bipartisan approach to the nation’s problems, and that it was his status as a president without a party and rejection by both the Whigs and opposition Democrats that doomed his presidency.

Christopher Leahy is a professor of history at Keuka College in New York and the author of President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler as well as an article in the Virginia Magazine of History & Biography entitled “Playing Her Greatest Role: Priscilla Cooper Tyler and the Politics of the White House Social Scene, 1841–44” (2012).

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Want to listen to an audio-only version of this lecture? Listen now on Soundcloud.