This Day in Presidential History (‘Princeton’ Explosion Brings Tragedy, Romance to Tyler)

Feb. 28, 1844—An explosion on the inaugural cruise of the USS Princeton on the Potomac River killed six people (including two Cabinet members) and injured 20; unsettled American attempts at acquiring Texas at a critical juncture; threw a monkey wrench into the use of innovative military weaponry; and landed widowed President John Tyler (pictured) a new, young wife.

The accident came at a critical juncture for the administration. Tyler, having become the first Vice-President to gain the Presidency because of the death of the incumbent (William Henry Harrison), was watching his slim hopes for winning his own term slip away. 

Like Andrew Johnson two decades later, he was a disaffected Democrat rather than a full-fledged member of the winning party (in this case, the Whigs) to which his predecessor belonged. He was, in effect, a man without a party, abandoned by all but one of the original Whig Cabinet members.

That one, Daniel Webster, was now leaving after having negotiated a treaty with Great Britain. But tensions with the British Empire remained in place because of a dispute over ownership of the Pacific Northwest, as well as lingering bad memories of the War of 1812.

The Princeton was designed to be a confidence-boosting measure aimed at the greatest navy in the world: a fast, steam-driven warship sporting the biggest gun ever mounted on a vessel to that point.

Commander Robert Field Stockton, having deafened the ears of those aboard by demonstrating the new weapon, decided to fire the ironically named "Peacemaker" gun again for a salute to George Washington as the ship passed the late President’s home, Mount Vernon. 

Nobody knows if Stockton poured a bit more into the charge or if the crew did so on its own. But as the charge ignited, flames, heat and shrapnel burst in unexpected directions.

Secretary of State Abel Parker Upshur and his just-installed successor at the Naval Department, Thomas Gilmer, died in the accident (with Gilmer gruesomely decapitated), while Tyler himself—climbing up a ladder to witness the charge—avoided following his predecessor into eternity before his full term in office was finished.

Among the other dead was former New York state Sen. David Gardiner, whose 24-year-old daughter, Julia, had previously been wooed in vain by Tyler. But Tyler’s swift action in the crisis—carrying Julia off in his arms when she fainted, away from the death and destruction—so impressed her that she finally yielded to his blandishments and agreed to marry him.

The nickname applied to George Washington—“Father of His Country”—is true only in a metaphorical sense. The nation’s first President produced no offspring. In a more literal sense, the nickname applied more directly to Tyler, who fathered 15 children, seven with Julia after the couple returned to his Virginia home once his term was over. 

Other results of the accident were not so happy. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina ended up with the State Department portfolio upon Upshur’s death. 

But, as H.W. Brands recounts in Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants, the appointment came not at the wish of Tyler but through the manipulation of the President’s friend, Sen. Henry Wise of Virginia, who misleadingly told Calhoun that if he went to the White House, Tyler would be ready to name him to the post.

The appointment vastly complicated Tyler’s attempt to annex Texas before leaving office. Once in office, Calhoun’s scolding of Great Britain for advocating abolitionism abroad enraged Thomas Hart Benton. The influential Missouri Senator, who had been carefully wooed to the cause by Upshur, now saw the land transaction as a stalking horse for introducing slavery into American territories, a movement that he (correctly) feared could splinter the Union.

The annexation treaty with Texas made it through the House but, through Benton’s fulminations, stalled in the Senate. It would take the support of incoming President James Knox Polk, and a joint resolution of Congress to bring the vast territory into the Union.

As for Stockton: Though anxious to hog credit for the Princeton when it looked like it would bring about his dream of a steam-driven navy, he couldn’t divert blame for it fast enough after the accident. John Ericsson, the inventor he had persuaded to emigrate from Sweden to work on the project, was exonerated in the post-accident inquiry, but Stockton ensured that he would not be paid by the government for his patents and his supervision of the shipbuilding. It would take his design of the Civil War ironclad Monitor before Ericsson’s genius was adequately celebrated.