Sold – Purge of 1843: John Tyler Gleefully Rids the Government of His Opponents

Tyler succeeded to the presidency upon the untimely death of William Henry Harrison, who had been in office just a month. No other vice president had become president before, and many people felt that a vice president who assumed the office of president did not assume the full powers of the presidency, and expected Tyler to act merely as a caretaker. Another complicating factor was that Tyler was a former Democrat, who although elected as a Whig vice president, was unsympathetic to Whig Party programs and goals. Tyler, an activist with plans of his own, found a cabinet and administration picked by Harrison, very much pining away for Old Tippicanoe. He was the kind of man who needed to feel personal loyalty from those he worked with. Instead he saw himself "surrounded by men who now have smiles in their eyes and honey on their tongues, the better to cajole and deceive.” With this as his attitude, it is no surprise that there were an extraordinary 22 changes in his cabinet during his four years in the White House; at one point everyone but Secretary of State Daniel Webster resigned en masse. 

In the spring of 1843, Tyler’s focus was on the annexation of Texas, a move he believed would be good for the south, good for the nation, and good for his political career and chances for reelection. The biography And Tyler Too states that in a letter dated May 12, 1843 to his new Secretary of the Treasury, J. C. Spencer, Tyler "launched a vigorous purge of federal officeholders hostile to his administration and to his Texas ambitions." Three days later he wrote Spencer with a follow-up set of instructions for purges and new loyal appointments.

Autograph Letter Signed as President, one long page 4to, Charles City County, Va., May 15, 1843, to Spencer.  “Your letter to the Bunker Hill gentry is excellent. Kingsbury’s letter is sound in its views- but before the collector is removed Lowry should be appointed, then off with his head. Nor do I care if a like service be done to the Postmaster at Portland. Dowden was the last man I should have suspected of so bad an act. What poor devils some men are. I still doubt about Lincoln until after our visit to Boston. My son John has left me today for Washington to consult with you as to a certain publication which Mr. Botts’ late article seems to require. I have him on the hip, I shall not let him off easily." He added a P.S. "Show me how to provide for Lansing."

The Lincoln mentioned was Levi Lincoln, Jr., a former Governor of Massachusetts and Whig member of Congress, who was appointed by Pres. Harrison collector of the port of Boston. He served until this purge. Tyler seems in this letter to be postponing giving Lincoln the axe until seeing him face to face. Congressman John M. Botts was a distinguished Virginia Whig whose open opposition to Tyler’s policies after he took office touched Tyler’s pride, and caused him to see Botts as an enemy. Dowden, Lowry and Kingsbury were apparently minor appointees about whom Tyler nonetheless concerned himself. The Bunker Hill referenced is a town in West Virginia.

The truth is that spoils were (and are) a fact of political life. However, this letter goes way beyond the norm; there is an element unpresidential and mean, yet actually gleeful, about it. It shows just the kind of man Tyler’s enemies thought he was and surely reflects the spirit in which the purges were carried out.

Tyler’s efforts to secure his political future through purges were a failure, and he remained a man without a party. The Whigs felt that he had betrayed their 1840 election victory and wanted nothing to do with him, while the Democrats, who agreed with many of his policies, considered him a turncoat and nominated Polk. This is one of the most important letters of Tyler to come on the market, revealing more about the man and his conduct of the presidency than any other we have seen.