Tyler, JOHN (1790-1862), an American statesman, tenth president of the United States, born in Charles City County, Va. He graduated at William and Mary College in 1807, and two years later he was admitted to the bar. He sat in the state legislature from 1811 till 1816, when he was chosen to fill a vacancy in Congress, and he was reelected in 1817 and 1819. He became a leader of the strict constructionist Democrats, opposed protection and, on the Missouri question, he denied the right of Congress to limit the extension of slavery or to control it at all in the territories. In 1825 he was elected governor of Virginia, and in December, 1826, he became a United States senator. In the Senate Tyler pursued an independent course, and while, in 1832, he supported Jackson rather than Clay, for the presidency, in February, 1833, he was the only senator who recorded his vote against the "Force Bill," granting extraordinary powers to the president in dealing with South Carolina, though he disapproved of nullification. He denounced the United States Bank, yet he resented the despotic methods by which Jackson overthrew it, supported Clay's motion to censure the president and in 1836 resigned his seat, rather than vote for expunging the resolution from the minutes of the Senate. He then joined the Whig party, and in 1840 he was elected vice-president on the ticket with General Harrison. President Harrison died a month after his inauguration, and Tyler became president. In the first year of his administration he quarreled with the Whig majority in Congress over the project to reestablish the national bank. Two bills were passed to this end, and both were vetoed by President Tyler. After the second veto, in September, 1841, all the cabinet except Daniel Webster resigned, he remaining until 1843 to complete the negotiation of the famous Webster-Ashburton Treaty. In 1844 he was succeeded by John C. Calhoun. Besides the Ashburton Treaty, the most important act of Tyler's administration was the annexation of Texas, in March, 1845, which led to the Mexican War. At the close of his term, he retired to Virginia and to private life until 1861, when he was president of a peace convention at Washington. Failing in his efforts at a compromise, he joined the Confederate cause and was a member of the Confederate Congress until his death.