John Tyler was the tenth president of the United States, serving from 1841 to 1845 after briefly holding office as the tenth vice president in 1841. He was elected vice president on the 1840 Whig ticket with president William Henry Harrison, succeeding to the presidency after Harrison's death in April 1841, only a month after the start of the new administration. Tyler was a stalwart supporter and advocate of states' rights, including regarding slavery, and he adopted nationalistic policies as president only when they did not infringe on the powers of the states. His unexpected rise to the presidency posed a threat to the presidential ambitions of Henry Clay and other politicians, and left Tyler estranged from both major political parties.
Tyler was born to a prominent Virginia family. His family, like many prominent white Southern families in the U.S. at the time, were slaveholders. He became a national figure at a time of political upheaval. In the 1820s, the nation's only political party was the Democratic-Republican Party, and it split into factions.