Whigs Expel Tyler After Bank Vetoes Reveal States' Rights Corruption Agenda

The Whig congressional caucus expelled President John Tyler from the party on September 13, 1841, after he vetoed national bank legislation for the second time in August, revealing that one of the main political principles guiding him was states’ rights ideology and protection of slavery rather than Whig economic nationalism. In response to Tyler’s second bank veto, every Cabinet member except Secretary of State Daniel Webster resigned in protest, demonstrating the complete breakdown of the Whig governing coalition just months after their 1840 electoral triumph. Tyler had become president only five months earlier when William Henry Harrison died after just one month in office, making Tyler the first vice president to succeed to the presidency.

Tyler’s opposition to the national bank—which Whigs wanted to help develop the country and restore economic stability after the Panic of 1837—exposed his true agenda of advancing Southern slaveholding interests through states’ rights doctrine. After being elected as Harrison’s running mate in 1840, Tyler was already a “Whig in name only” who had been expelled from the Democratic Party for opposing Jackson but never genuinely embraced Whig principles. Congress had passed bank legislation tailored to address Tyler’s stated constitutional concerns, but he vetoed it anyway, making clear that his objections were pretextual cover for ideological opposition to federal economic coordination that might threaten slavery.

Tyler’s expulsion left him politically isolated but “unencumbered by party restraints,” enabling him to pursue an aggressive pro-slavery agenda that culminated in his secret negotiations for Texas annexation beginning in September 1843. After the Whigs poised to become the nation’s dominant party and enact Henry Clay’s nationalistic program following their 1840 victory, Tyler’s betrayal derailed their entire legislative agenda and demonstrated the power of the Slave Power to infiltrate and sabotage supposedly nationalist coalitions. The episode established a pattern where Southern politicians would nominally join parties for electoral purposes while maintaining primary loyalty to slavery expansion, using states’ rights rhetoric as cover for systematic obstruction of national economic development that might undermine the slave system.