Alice Wilson, age 14, of Meridian, Miss., for her question:
WHO WAS THE FIRST VICE PRESIDENT TO BECOME PRESIDENT UPON A PRESIDENT'S DEATH?
John Tyler, the 10th President of the United States, was the first Vice President to succeed to the office of chief executive on the death of a President.
William Henry Harrison, the ninth President, caught cold the day he was inaugurated President and he died 30 days later. He was the first to die in office and he also served the shortest term of any President in American history. And succeeding him into the White House was his election running mate, John Tyler.
Tyler was known as an independent who refused to compromise on principles in order to please political allies. His father, also named John Tyler, was an American Revolution patriot who served three terms as governor of Virginia.
The son was born in Virginia in 1790 and after completing his legal studies, he entered politics, devoting himself to Thomas Jefferson's principles of states' rights and strictly limited power for the federal government.
At age 21 Tyler was elected to the Virginia legislature and five years later was chosen for the U.S. House of Representatives, serving there for four years. After returning to the state legislature for a brief stint, Tyler followed in his father's footsteps, becoming governor of Virginia in 1825 at the age of 35. Two years later he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Although he was a Democrat, Tyler opposed his party's leader, President Andrew Jackson, when Jackson forced South Carolina to accept a federal tariff in 1832, and he voted to censure the President for removing deposits from the Bank of the United States in 1834.
The Whig party, hoping to broaden its electoral appeal, chose this independent minded Democrat Tyler as William Henry Harrison's running mate in 1840. And we know what happened.
Tyler's time as President wasn't easy. Because he was the first person to occupy the Presidency without having been elected to office, he was referred to contemptuously as "His Accidency."
When the strong minded Tyler insisted that he was President in the full sense of the word, however, no one ventured to challenge him. An attempt was made to impeach him but it failed to win the necessary votes.
When the members of his Cabinet quit their positions, Tyler calmly replaced them with men of his own choosing. The one holdover was Daniel Webster, who, as secretary of state, negotiated the Webster Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain in 1842, resolving a dispute between the U.S. and Canada.
The most significant domestic measure enacted during Tyler's single term was the Preemption Act of 1841, which gave squatters on government lands the right to buy 160 acres at the minimum auction price without competitive bidding.
His last act as President was to sign the bill providing for the annexation of Texas.