[John Tyler, full-length portrait, seated at table, facing right]

John Tyler was the tenth President of the United States (1841-1845). He was the first Vice-President to succeed to the Presidency after the death of his predecessor, President William Henry Harrison who died in April 1841. John Tyler was a constitutionalist. When the southern states started to secede in 1861, he tried to reach a compromise but failed and became one of the founders of the Southern Confederacy and was a member of the eleven Southern states Confederate House of Representatives. He died in 1862, in the beginning of the American Civil War. "Let it be henceforth proclaimed to the world that man's conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God."