President Without a Party - by Christopher J Leahy (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Christopher Leahy's "President Without a Party" is the first full-scale academic biography of President John Tyler since Oliver P. Chitwood's 1939 book, "John Tyler: Champion of the Old South." Leahy's work is a much-needed update and corrective to Chitwood's largely political and dated biography. That study and most of what has been written about Tyler since then largely neglect Tyler's personal life and his pre-presidential career. Also, until now, no author has satisfactorily explained the dynamics of Tyler's fight with the Whig Party during his presidency. Leahy's biography addresses all of those topics and is a much more complete account and explanation for Tyler's life and career. Leahy examines Tyler's early life in the Virginia Tidewater as the son of a Revolutionary politician. He details Tyler's career as an attorney and politician, from his entry into the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, through his presidency (1841-1845), and finally to his efforts at the failed peace conference of 1861 and the Virginia secession convention. Leahy also analyzes Tyler's personal life, especially the relationships he shared with his two wives and fifteen children. In the end, he suggests that politics fulfilled Tyler most, often to the detriment of his family relationships. Besides filling in these gaps, Leahy's biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the simplistic explanation that Tyler was a merely a stalwart defender of the Old South, as Oliver Chitwood argued many years ago, Leahy offers a nuanced argument which demonstrates that Tyler was not a rigid ideologue and that as president he favored a middle-of-the-road, bipartisan approach to problems, an approach on his part that previous biographers and historians have overlooked"--

Book Synopsis

Historians have long viewed President John Tyler as one of the nation's least effective heads of state. In President without a Party--the first full--scale biography of Tyler in more than fifty years and the first new academic study of him in eight decades--Christopher J. Leahy explores the life of the tenth chief executive of the United States.

Born in the Virginia Tidewater into an elite family sympathetic to the ideals of the American Revolution, Tyler, like his father, worked as an attorney before entering politics. Leahy uses a wealth of primary source materials to chart Tyler's early political path, from his election to the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, to his vice--presidential nomination on the Whig ticket for the campaign of 1840. When William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly a mere month after assuming the presidency, Tyler became the first vice president to become president because of the death of the incumbent. Leahy traces Tyler's ascent to the highest office in the land and unpacks the fraught dynamics between Tyler and his fellow Whigs, who ultimately banished the beleaguered president from their ranks and stymied his election bid three years later.

Leahy also examines the president's personal life, especially his relationships with his wives and children. In the end, Leahy suggests, politics fulfilled Tyler the most, often to the detriment of his family. Such was true even after his presidency, when Virginians elected him to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and northerners and Unionists branded him a "traitor president."

The most complete accounting of Tyler's life and career, Leahy's biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the standard, often shortsighted studies that describe Tyler as simply a defender of the Old South's dominant ideology of states' rights and strict construction of the Constitution, Leahy offers a nuanced portrayal of a president who favored a middle--of--the--road, bipartisan approach to the nation's problems. This strategy did not make Tyler popular with either the Whigs or the opposition Democrats while he was in office, or with historians and biographers ever since. Moreover, his most significant achievement as president--the annexation of Texas--exacerbated sectional tensions and put the United States on the road to civil war.

Review Quotes

This deeply researched volume is sure to become the standard autobiography on John Tyler. Readers--both historians and the general public--will devour the riveting narrative, replete with sparkling portraits of Tyler's multi-generational family and his shifting political alliances. The book makes important contributions to our understanding of this president's troubling legacy, a man who served not just one, but two nations. As Leahy shows, Tyler was not just 'Too'--in his expansive policies at home and abroad, and his posture over slavery and its preservation, his impact was deep. The book's emphasis on Tyler's sense of place--his intense loyalty to Virginia and the South generally--helps us see more closely how the Civil War came about. In our time, with passionate debates over the legacy of Southern monuments and race relations stirring our country, these issues are especially important--Katherine A. S. Sibley, author of "A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover and A Companion to First Ladies"

With publication of this deeply researched, gracefully written reappraisal, the most comprehensive Tyler biography in 80 years, the man without a party continues to defy traditional standards of presidential performance. As Christopher J. Leahy demonstrates, one needn't be a successful president to be judged a consequential one.--the Wall Street Journal

John Tyler has long deserved study, and Christopher Leahy's insightful political biography of 'his accidency'--the first Vice-President to assume the Oval Office upon his President's death--is the book we've long needed. Nuanced, textured, sympathetic to his subject's times and our own, Leahy's will long be the standard for those who study this precedent-setting President.--Jeffrey A. Engel, Director, Center for Presidential History

About the Author

Christopher J. Leahy is professor of history at Keuka College in New York.