LYCOS RETRIEVER 
John Tyler: White House
built 671 days ago
When he was 21 John won a election into the House of Delegates. When the war of 1812 began Tyler captain of volunteers. But he resigned and went back to the legislature after his company had seen no action.
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Tyler believed that these paradoxes stemmed from his devout adherence to states' rights. Born and bred to be a Virginia gentleman of the old school, he was educated at William and Mary, studied law, and swiftly ascended in state politics. He served successively in the Virginia House of Delegates, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the governorship of Virginia before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1827.
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Why in the end did Tyler forsake the Union along with his lifelong commitment to the pursuit of America's national destiny? Undoubtedly because the Madisonian approach was the bedrock of his belief in national destiny-territorial aggrandizement and ever more land for the expansion of both slave and free labor were absolutely essential in his formula for national greatness. Not surprisingly, but unfortunately for the nation he had served so faithfully, when that recipe for national glory was discarded he chose slavery and its continued unrestricted expansion as the key ingredients in his vision of the American dream. Tyler's decision for secession ... was driven by the fear of a future race war between blacks and whites. Shortly after Lincoln's election, he candidly explained to an old friend how slavery and expansion were inextricably linked to his anxieties about the racial question. In a November 16, 1860, letter to Dr. Silas Reed, Tyler confided that Virginia "will never consent to have her blacks cribbed and confined within proscribed and specified limits - and thus be involved in all the consequences of a war of the races in some 20 or 30 years.
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When the first southern states seceded in 1861, Tyler led a compromise movement; failing, he worked to create the Southern Confederacy. He died in 1862, a member of the Confederate House of Representatives.
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After serving five years in the state legislature, Tyler was a member of the U. S. House of Representatives (1817–1821) and later of the Senate (1827–1836). He ... served, uneventfully, as governor of Virginia (1825–1827) and as both rector and chancellor of the College of William and Mary.
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Tyler served five one-year terms in the Virginia house of delegates and was chosen to sit on the state executive council. In 1817, at the age of twenty-seven, he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving there until 1821 without apparent distinction. He actively opposed legislation designed to implement Henry Clay's "American System," linking a federally sponsored network of canals, railroads, and turnpikes with a strong central bank and protective tariffs in an alliance that seemed designed to unite the North and West at the South's expense.
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