biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1790–1862)
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| biography:
| US statesman and 10th president (1841–5), born in Charles City Co, Virgina, USA. Trained as a lawyer, he steadily ascended the political ladder, gaining the state legislature (1811), the US House of Representatives (1816–19), the Virginia governorship (1825–7), and the US Senate (1827–36). Highly active as a senator, he maintained a states' rights position and resisted all attempts to regulate slavery, and resigned from the Senate to protest President Jackson's anti-nullification measures. Gravitating to the anti-Jackson Whigs, Tyler won election as Benjamin Harrison's vice-president in 1840, then ascended to the presidency on Harrison's death in April 1841. He soon alienated his Whig supporters by resisting a new national bank, and at one point he had to lead the White House staff in holding off a violent mob. In 1843 the Whigs even threatened to impeach him. Nonetheless, his term saw the Webster–Ashburton Treaty fixing the borders of the USA and Canada, and he also encouraged the move to annex Texas. Long out of the public eye after failing to be nominated in 1844, he headed a Southern peace mission to find a compromise to avoid splitting the Union in 1861. When that failed, he voted for Virginia to secede, and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives just before his death. |
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