As a boy, the life of John Ty-ler was much the same as that of the boys
of to-day. He was born on March 29th, 1790, in Charles Cit-y,
Vir-gin-i-a, at a time when the whole land was at peace. No talk of the
red men came to his young ears; and no fear fell like a dark cloud over
the fun and play of his boy-hood. He was the son of a man who had for
friends the great men of his day;--Wash-ing-ton and Ben-ja-min
Har-ri-son were warm, close friends of old John Ty-ler; and he was at
one time Gov-ern-or of Vir-gin-i-a. Young John was sent to school when
he was a ver-y small boy; and, though he was fond of sports and games,
he kept hard at work at his books and won a high place at school. He
was a mere boy when he could en-ter Wil-liam and Ma-ry Col-lege; and he
left in 1806 at the head of his class. He at once took up law with his
fa-ther, and soon showed the good stuff of which he was made. Clear and
quick was his mind, swift to think and feel; and his words came as fast
as his thoughts. He rose with great, quick strides towards the first
place in the land. In 1825 he was made Gov-ern-or of Vir-gin-i-a; and in
1827, was sent to Con-gress, where he kept his seat for six years; these
were years of strife as to the slave trade, and there were fierce, hard
words and harsh thoughts be-tween the men of the North and those of the
South. Ty-ler was at home for a few years af-ter he left Con-gress, and
took a high place as a law-yer. In 1836 he was put up with Har-ri-son in
the race for the pres-i-dent's chair. But it was not till 1840 that he
won this place; then, as the vice-pres-i-dent had not a great deal to
do, Ty-ler went home to Wil-liams-burg. It was here that the sad news
of Har-ri-son's death was brought to him, and he at once went on to
Wash-ing-ton. Here he found he had a hard task; for he and his Con-gress
did not think the same on the great ques-tions of the day and were
ev-er at strife. One of his first acts was to put down a state war
in Mis-sou-ri. A Mor-mon, by the name of Smith, and a band of men who
thought as he did went down there to live; folks there did not like this
and tried to drive them out of the state, but this was a hard thing to
do, for there were a-bout 12,000 Mor-mons. At last, Ty-ler sent troops
there to put down the strife, and the Mor-mons were sent to Il-li-nois.
They were here but a short time when the same old strife a-rose, and
then they fled to the lands in the far west--where they are to-day,
in the state of Utah. War broke out in Tex-as while Ty-ler was in the
chair, and af-ter fierce fights be-tween the Tex-ans and Mex-i-cans the
Tex-ans won, and were at the head of the state. They asked at once to
come in-to the Un-ion, and in 1845 this great state came in. In the last
year of Ty-ler's rule Sam-u-el F. B. Morse found out how to send words
in just a flash of time through miles and miles of space; and you
chil-dren know well that the fine wire stretched from one great pole to
the next on which the quick news was sent was called the "tel-e-graph."
At the end of Ty-ler's first term, James Knox Polk had the most votes,
and so took the pres-i-dent's chair; and this news was the first that
was sent o-ver the tel-e-graph wires.
[Illustration: JOHN TYLER.]
[Illustration: JAMES K. POLK.]