John Tyler

Born into a slaveholding Virginia family in 1790, Tyler rode the fractures of the Democratic-Republican Party into politics, breaking with Andrew Jackson over states' rights and drifting toward the Whigs. He landed on the 1840 ticket as Harrison's running mate under the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" - then inherited the presidency 31 days later when Harrison died, the first vice president to do so. Tyler took the oath immediately, establishing the succession precedent, but governed like a man without a coalition: he vetoed the Whig Congress's national bank and tariff bills, saw nearly his entire cabinet resign, and became the first president to have a veto overridden. Domestic policy stalled, though he secured the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Britain and the Treaty of Wanghia with China, and pushed through Texas annexation on his way out the door in 1845. When the Civil War began in 1861, he backed the Confederacy, presiding over Virginia's secession convention and winning election to the Confederate House before dying in January 1862, largely unremembered.