10th President John Tyler… Most Reviled U.S. Presidents Ever

John Tyler became the tenth President of the United States (1841-1845) when President William Henry Harrison died in April 1841.

Following differences with President Andrew Jackson, Tyler left the Democratic Party and joined the rival Whig party.

As Harrison became the president, Tyler, deeming the vice president’s duties largely irrelevant, returned home to his Virginia plantation.

During his stay in Virginia, Tyler was given the news that Harrison had become the first American commander-in-chief to die in office, just 31 days after the inauguration.

Upon returning to the nation’s capital, Tyler took the presidential oath, which angered strict constructionists who argued that the Constitution only specified that, when a president died, the vice president would inherit presidential “powers and duties”—not the office itself.

Tyler made fun of Secretary of State Daniel Webster when he informed him that Harrison had agreed to abide by the majority decision of the cabinet on any policy matter—even if he was personally opposed.

“I can never consent to being dictated to,” he informed his cabinet. “I am the president, and I shall be responsible for my administration,” assuring that he would neither serve as an interim “acting president” nor carry out all of his predecessor’s agenda, which included re-establishment of a national bank and protective tariffs.

This act infuriated the Whig leaders, in particular Senator Henry Clay.

After he twice vetoed Clay’s bill to re-establish a national bank, supporters of the senator forced open the White House gates, hurled stones at the presidential mansion, shouting “Groans for the traitor!”

The Whigs expelled the president from the party and tried to evict him from the White House altogether after vetoing yet another one of their bills.

Former president John Quincy Adams wrote that the tenth president was “in direct violation both of the grammar and context of the Constitution,” and eight senators voted against a resolution recognizing him as the new president.

“Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette—the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace,” the tenth president said.

Nonetheless, he failed to gain any popularity, as he succeeded only in alienating politicians on both sides of the aisle.

The New York Times described him as "the most unpopular public man that had ever held any office in the United States."

Some of the tenth president’s successors didn’t think very highly of him either, as Harry Truman called him “one of the presidents we could have done without.”

“He has been called a mediocre man; but this is unwarranted flattery,” Theodore Roosevelt said . “He was a politician of monumental littleness.”

C-SPAN’s 2017 Presidential Historians Survey ranked him in the bottom five presidents, along with Warren Harding, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan.

He died in 1862 due to health condition; however, his death was the only one in presidential history not to be officially recognized in Washington, because of his allegiance to the Confederate States of America.