He was the first Vice President appointed to the office of President following the death of his predecessor. A slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" came from the battle that was associated with the former president over a famous battle. He was instrumental in the "Log-Cabin" bill which would allow a settler to claim 160 acres of land before it was offered publicly for sale. He also believed that federal powers should be limited to those listed in the Constitution. Another of his bills was a tariff bill protecting northern manufacturers. Tyler bitterly opposed tariffs, and the vote to men without property, resenting this challenge to traditional southern power.He also had an unpopular movement to annex Texas, was against the abolitionists who thought that it would become another slave state. He was ofter referred to him as "His Accidency," and the Cabinet was against him. Once his cabinet was organized, he devoted his attention to a highly successful foreign policy. He spearheaded negotiations to secure the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which pertained to the Maine boundary dispute and several other issues.

Tyler began his aministration without advisers or friends. Another label the press gave him was "a president without a party." Just before to the Civil War Tyler chaired the Richmond Convention, which attempted to reconcile the North and South. When Lincoln turned down his compromises, Tyler became a leading supporter for Southern secession. He built his career on a defense of the slave-owning planter class of the Southern coastal areas. Tyler spent his entire life fighting in and governing territories in the Ohio River Valley frontier. He extended the Monroe Doctrine, to the Hawaiian Islands in 1842 to stop British interests and sent a trade mission to China. He became the first president to marry while in office. Tyler retired to his Virginia plantation in 1845. In February 1861 he returned as chairman of the peace convention to attempt to avert civil war. After Virginia seceded, he served in the provisional Confederate Congress and was elected to its House of Representatives. He died in Richmond, Virginia on Jan. 18, 1862.