AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED

Washington DC, 30 March 1842. Letter. Two-page AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED "J Tyler," less than a year into his presidency, on both sides of a 4-3/4" x 7-1/4" sheet to his Secretary of War John Spencer [In 1843 he would become Secretary of the Treasury]. In full: "Major Craig should, in my view of it, have issued an order authorizing the workmen to return to their work-- and expressed the hope that in future all disturbances will cease. The addition might have been made-- that the Superintendent and govt. are activated solidly by the motive to protect and advance the public interest-- nor is it too late now to say-- that the order of the 28 does not apply to those heretofore employ'd-- but to such only as may be applicants in future. Such a course is best rely upon it-- Yr J Tyler." The letter likely refers to disturbances at the Harper's Ferry armory upon the replacement of the former civilian superintendent with ordnance officer Major Henry K. Craig. Many of the men employed there chartered a boat on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and proceeded to Washington City to see the president, John Tyler, and state to him their grievances. "Having reached Washington they obtained an audience of the president who received them in a style worthy of the head of a great nation and, what is more in the estimation of some people, a Virginia gentleman. Compliments were exchanged and the president gave each of them a cordial shake of the hand, an honor which was duly appreciated, for it is related that one of the delegation, in a burst of enthusiasm, reached out a hand of enormous proportions and dubious color to meet that of the president, at the same time exclaiming, 'Hullo, old fellow, give us your corn stealer.' This handsome compliment, no doubt, was very gratifying to the president, for he made them a speech in which he declared in the most emphatic manner, that he considered the working men as the bone and sinew of the land and its main dependence in war and in peace; that he loved them as such and that their interests should be his care. In this strain he continued for some time, but suddenly, he threw cold water on the hopes he had created by telling them that 'they must go home and hammer out their own salvation.' This figurative expression and the allusion to that emblem of vulcanic labor -- the hammer -- were not received with the admiration which their wit deserved, and it is said that many loud and deep curses were uttered by some sensitive and indiscreet piece workers, and that the august presence of 'Tyler too' had not the effect of awing the bold navigators into suitable respect for the head of the nation. They returned home wiser but hardly better men and, from that period dates the bitter opposition of many Harper's Ferry people to the military system of superintendency which continued until the final overthrow of that order of things in 1854" (Barry, Joseph: THE STRANGE STORY OF HARPER'S FERRY, 1903, pages 31-32).

John Tyler was the tenth president of the United States and the first vice president to succeed to the presidency upon the death of William Henry Harrison who died 31 days after taking office. He was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives in November 1861. When he died the following year, Jefferson Davis held a lavish funeral, draping a Confederate flag over Tyler's coffin. To this day, Tyler remains the only U.S. president not to be buried beneath the American flag. Amazingly, he has a grandson who is still alive. Later in 1842, John Spencer's son, 20-year-old Philip, a midshipman aboard USS Somers, was executed with two others for mutiny without a court-martial. Their deaths are one reason the U.S. Navy stopped training boys at sea and founded the United States Naval Academy. The event on USS Somers may be the only mutiny on a warship in US Navy history and was almost certainly a model for much of BILLY BUDD by Herman Melville, who was the first cousin of Lieutenant Guert Gansevoort, an officer aboard the ship.