Bills for a National Bank Passed and Vetoed

While the second bill was pending in Congress, a private letter written by the late John M. Botts of Virginia, concerning the veto, was made public. He charged the President with infidelity to the party in power, saying: "One Captain Tyler is making a desperate effort to set himself up with the Loco-Focos, but he'll be headed yet, and, I regret to say, it will end badly for him. He will be an object of execration with both parties. He has refused to listen to the admonitions of his best friends, and looked only to the whisperings of ambitious and designing mischief-makers who have collected around him." This letter so irritated the President that, allowing his personal feelings to control his public action, he resolved to oppose any bank bill that might be offered at that session. The second bill, which the President had approved, was passed without alteration on the 3d of September. He had expressed a strong desire, at the beginning of the session, to have the matter postponed until the regular session, but the friends of the measure in Congress and throughout the country demanded immediate action. The bill was submitted to the President for his signature, and pursuant to his resolve, he vetoed it on the 9th-six days after its adoption. In consequence of this act, the Whigs, who had elevated Mr. Tyler to his high dignity, were greatly exasperated, and he was denounced as unfaithful to solemn pledges and as a secret enemy, who was playing into the hands of his late associates, the Democrats. All of Mr. Tyler's cabinet-ministers resigned excepting Mr. Webster, who patriotically remained at his post because grave public interests connected with his department required it. In fact, Mr. Webster felt that the bank matter had been pushed with too much haste and persistency, considering the state of the President's mind, "since there was reason to believe that the President would be glad of time for information and reflection before being called on to form an opinion on another plan for a bank-a plan somewhat new to the country." Mr. Webster wrote, "I thought his known wishes ought to be complied with. I think so still. I think this is a course just to the President and wise in behalf of the Whig party." But such counsels did not prevail, and there was a decided alienation between the President and the Whig party from the time of the resignation of his cabinet. The two principal motives attributed to Mr. Tyler as the cause of his vetoes of the bank bills were, first, his constitutional scruples, with a determination to preserve his character for consistency; and, second, having set his heart upon a second term for the Presidency, he was charged with endeavoring to ingratiate himself with his recent party friends, the Democrats, by his bank vetoes, and thus become the candidate for re-election in 1844. But neither party nominated him, and he accepted that honor from a convention of delegates composed chiefly of office-holders, but perceiving that his election would be impossible, he withdrew in August, and he and his friends gave their influence to the Democratic party.

During that extraordinary session of Congress, other important measures