John Tyler was among the strictest of the strict constructionists and would bow to no one or no party when required to make political decisions. … Within just a few months of his presidency, his fellow Whigs kicked him out of the party out of frustration over Tyler’s persistent objections to the Congressional majority that helped bring him to power. … The staunch supporter of states’ rights, always with a sense of allegiance to Southern principles, concluded his career as not only a stout supporter of Southern secession but also an elected member of the Congress of the Confederacy. This “Accidental President,” as he was often called, was true to himself to the very end, even when those decisions cast him in the worst possible light in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, as well as most of posterity. … Tyler took Jefferson’s republican creed to the extreme, often to his own personal and political detriment, but he was constitutionally incapable of acting otherwise. … [He] followed the text of the U.S. Constitution as his sacrosanct political bible, but only until it had been so systematically violated that he advocated for withdrawal from the compact. This act was far from traitorous. To Tyler, it was the only honorable thing to do, in the great revolutionary tradition of the Spirit of ’76.