Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140633 in Books
• Published on: 1990-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent life of an underrated president and statesman.
John Tyler had the dubious distinction of being the only president of his era with consistent principles. While Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe occasionally deviated from the states' rights creed, Tyler was as good as his word. This infuriated the Whigs, who -- as Chitwood makes clear -- elevated Tyler to Vice President precisely to appeal to their own states' rights wing, then ran him out of the party when he proved true to his position in the federal government's top executive office.

Readers interested in the controversy over Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings will find page 102 of this book especially interesting; Texans will cheer Tyler, even if they don't like Secretary of State John C. Calhoun's tactics; and Virginia natives will appreciate a politician who promised to put Virginia first, then did. Tyler's only period of sordid, political calculation came in the constitutional convention of 1829-1830, when he took a back seat to B.W. Leigh in order to avoid riling one section of the state against himself. This minor glitch can surely be overlooked in a career as laudable as Tyler's.

Chitwood criticizes Tyler for not helping smoothe the way from slavery to a free society, and there's much to lament there. The fact that this book was published in 1939 means that it is devoid of the republican/liberal debate that dominated the historiography over the past 20 years. Rush out, then, and buy it! (I got my copy at "Sherwood Forest," President Tyler's James River estate in Virginia, which is run as a public attraction by the president's descendants. Although John Tyler was born in 1790, his *grandson* lives in the house today!)

Informative, well-written...but a little too biased...
This is part of my personal project of reading a biography on each of our presidents. The book got high marks from me because it taught me a lot about a president---and man---about whom little is known. One also learns by association a lot about Clay, Calhoun and Webster. Even considering that it was written in the 30's, it still reads very well and it also benefits from having at least one of the president's surviving children as one of the main sources of information and interpretation.

Where the book falls short for me is in its bias toward the subject. Most of the other biographies I have read have some kind of bias toward their subject; that may be inevitable. But I thought this one had a little more than I thought was adequate. Clearly, Tyler was a likable and principled man and politics then were possibly uglier than they are now, but I think that he had more to do with his own political misfortunes than the author claims.

Still, despite my three-star rating, I thought this is a must-read for aficionados interested in this particular president. If you're interested in the period leading to the Civil War, I can think of many other books and biographies that may provide a better account.

Portrait of a Confused Man
In my title of this review, I'm referring to both the author and subject. If any president deserves to be the subject of an exhaustive psychoanalytical study, it is President John Tyler. Tyler agreed to be Vice President for a Whig party with which he had very little agreement. Reading between the lines of this book, one gets the sense that Tyler was a vain, insecure, at times paranoid (even though people really were out to get him) man. He took the Vice Presidency because he wanted to be accepted. After becoming president upon the death of President Harrison, Tyler quickly alienated the Whigs by first being against, then for, then against again, a national bank. Losing all credibility with the Whigs, he then began kow-towing to the Democrats for acceptance. Of course the Democrats would never fully accept a former Whig, so President Tyler became a "President without a Party" and accomplished very little. Standing up for a principle, no matter how noble, is useless unless you can use the political mechanisms to enact your principles. Tyler's playing his 'states rights' card against each party eventually led to his downfall.

Now, for the author. Chitwood is a classic apologist. He tried so hard to defend Tyler that his narrative turned defensive. He also did not criticize Tyler when it was obviously necessary and heaped praise upon him for confusing and inconsistent views. For example, when John Tyler argued in 1820 that slavery could be abolished if it were allowed to expand into the Missouri territory, Chitwood called the argument "brilliant."(p. 49) His argument may have been novel, innovative, creative, but not brilliant!