How to use this Page

By Michael Gerhardt

John Tyler remains one of the most interesting, active, and constitutionally significant presidents we have ever had.

To begin with, he is the first vice president to be elevated to the presidency because of the death of the incumbent, William Henry Harrison. Harrison died 31 days after his inauguration in 1841. Many congressional leaders and the cabinet believed that the vice president, Tyler, did not automatically become the president upon Harrison’s death. They argued that he merely became the acting president or remained the vice president but was eligible to use some of the powers of the presidency with the full power and authority of the office. Tyler contested the claim. In his first meeting with Harrison’s cabinet, he convinced them to accept the legitimacy of his claim to take the presidential oath. He persuaded skeptical congressional leaders as well. In doing so, he established a practice and understanding that was later enshrined within the Constitution in the Twenty-fifth Amendment and is still followed to this day.

Second, John Tyler is the only American president whose party expelled him while he was the president. Tyler had been a life-long Democrat who left his party to become the running mate of William Henry Harrison, a Whig, in 1840. After Tyler became the president, Whigs did not trust him. After he exercised power in ways that Whigs did not approve, they formally expelled him from the party. For the remainder of his presidency, Tyler was, as he himself said, a man “without a party.”

Third, throughout his presidency, Tyler battled successfully against congressional efforts to thwart a number of unique presidential powers. As a result, he successfully consolidated the nominating, removal, and veto powers of future presidents.

Fourth, Tyler was also the only president to have had virtually all of his cabinet resign in protest over his actions. When Tyler vetoed a tariff bill, which his entire cabinet thought he should sign, all but Secretary of State Daniel Webster resigned in protest. Tyler happily accepted their resignations and replaced all but Webster with people who actually supported him politically.

Fifth, Tyler set a record for the numbers of cabinet and Supreme Court nominations that were rejected or forced to be withdrawn. In fact, he made eight nominations to fill two Supreme Court vacancies, only one of which the Senate confirmed.

As a bonus, Tyler also took unilateral action to clear the path for Texas to become a state. Though the Senate refused to ratify a treaty which would have made Texas statehood possible, Tyler got a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate to approve an annexation bill. Tyler signed the annexation bill three days before leaving office.

Through all of these and other actions, Tyler made the presidency stronger, but at the cost of his own political fortunes.  He left office widely politically unpopular and ended his days as a member of the Confederate Congress.

Michael Gerhardt is Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A nationally recognized authority on constitutional conflicts, he has testified in several Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and has published five books, including The Forgotten Presidents and The Power of Precedent. Read his previous blog posts on the American presidents.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only American history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit: “Official White House Portrait of John Tyler” by George Peter Alexander Healy, February 1859. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Five interesting facts about John Tyler appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• The American Red Cross in World War I
• Five things you didn’t know about Franklin Pierce
• Oral history, collective memory, and community among cloistered nuns

 

By Lynne Murphy

For 20 years, 14 of those in England, I’ve been giving lectures about the social power afforded to dictionaries, exhorting my students to discard the belief that dictionaries are infallible authorities. The students laugh at my stories about nuns who told me that ain’t couldn’t be a word because it wasn’t in the (school) dictionary and about people who talk about the Dictionary in the same way that they talk about the Bible. But after a while I realized that nearly all the examples in the lecture were, like me, American. At first, I could use the excuse that I’d not been in the UK long enough to encounter good examples of dictionary jingoism. But British examples did not present themselves over the next decade, while American ones kept streaming in. Rather than laughing with recognition, were my students simply laughing with amusement at my ridiculous teachers? Is the notion of dictionary-as-Bible less compelling in a culture where only about 17% of the population consider religion to be important to their lives? (Compare the United States, where 3 in 10 people believe that the Bible provides literal truth.) I’ve started to wonder: how different are British and American attitudes toward dictionaries, and to what extent can those differences be attributed to the two nations’ relationships with the written word?

Constitution of the United States of America. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Our constitutions are a case in point. The United States Constitution is a written document that is extremely difficult to change; the most recent amendment took 202 years to ratify. We didn’t inherit this from the British, whose constitution is uncodified — it’s an aggregation of acts, treaties, and tradition. If you want to freak an American out, tell them that you live in a country where ‘[n]o Act of Parliament can be unconstitutional, for the law of the land knows not the word or the idea’. Americans are generally satisfied that their constitution — which is just about seven times longer than this blog post — is as relevant today as it was when first drafted and last amended. We like it so much that a holiday to celebrate it was instituted in 2004.

Dictionaries and the law

But with such importance placed on the written word of law comes the problem of how to interpret those words. And for a culture where the best word is the written word, a written authority on how to interpret words is sought. Between 2000 and 2010, 295 dictionary definitions were cited in 225 US Supreme Court opinions. In contrast, I could find only four UK Supreme court decisions between 2009 and now that mention dictionaries. American judicial reliance on dictionaries leaves lexicographers and law scholars uneasy; most dictionaries aim to describe common usage, rather than prescribe the best interpretation for a word. Furthermore, dictionaries differ; something as slight as the presence or absence of a the or a usually might have a great impact on a literalist’s interpretation of a law. And yet US Supreme Court dictionary citation has risen by about ten times since the 1960s.

No particular dictionary is America’s Bible—but that doesn’t stop the worship of dictionaries, just as the existence of many Bible translations hasn’t stopped people citing scripture in English. The name Webster is not trademarked, and so several publishers use it on their dictionary titles because of its traditional authority. When asked last summer how a single man, Noah Webster, could have such a profound effect on American English, I missed the chance to say: it wasn’t the man; it was the books — the written word. His “Blue-Backed Speller”, a textbook used in American schools for over 100 years, has been called ‘a secular catechism to the nation-state’. At a time when much was unsure, Webster provided standards (not all of which, it must be said, were accepted) for the new English of a new nation.

American dictionaries, regardless of publisher, have continued in that vein. British lexicography from Johnson’s dictionary to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has excelled in recording literary language from a historical viewpoint. In more recent decades British lexicography has taken a more international perspective with serious innovations and industry in dictionaries for learners. American lexicographical innovation, in contrast, has largely been in making dictionaries more user-friendly for the average native speaker.

The Oxford English Dictionary, courtesy of Oxford Dictionaries. Do not use without permission.

Local attitudes: marketing dictionaries

By and large, lexicographers on either side of the Atlantic are lovely people who want to describe the language in a way that’s useful to their readers. But a look at the way dictionaries are marketed belies their local histories, the local attitudes toward dictionaries, and assumptions about who is using them. One big general-purpose British dictionary’s cover tells us it is ‘The Language Lover’s Dictionary’. Another is ‘The unrivalled dictionary for word lovers’.

Now compare some hefty American dictionaries, whose covers advertise ‘expert guidance on correct usage’ and ‘The Clearest Advice on Avoiding Offensive Language; The Best Guidance on Grammar and Usage’. One has a badge telling us it is ‘The Official Dictionary of the ASSOCIATED PRESS’. Not one of the British dictionaries comes close to such claims of authority. (The closest is the Oxford tagline ‘The world’s most trusted dictionaries’, which doesn’t make claims about what the dictionary does, but about how it is received.) None of the American dictionary marketers talk about loving words. They think you’re unsure about language and want some help. There may be a story to tell here about social class and dictionaries in the two countries, with the American publishers marketing to the aspirational, and the British ones to the arrived. And maybe it’s aspirationalism and the attendant insecurity that goes with it that makes America the land of the codified rule, the codified meaning. By putting rules and meanings onto paper, we make them available to all. As an American, I kind of like that. As a lexicographer, it worries me that dictionary users don’t always recognize that English is just too big and messy for a dictionary to pin down.

A version of this article originally appeared on the OxfordWords blog.

Lynne Murphy, Reader in Linguistics at the University of Sussex, researches word meaning and use, with special emphasis on antonyms. She blogs at Separated by a Common Language and is on Twitter at @lynneguist.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only language articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post How do British and American attitudes to dictionaries differ? appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• Farmily album: the rise of the felfie
• Have you heard? Oxford DNB releases 200th episode in biography podcast
• Beyond Ed Sullivan: The Beatles on American television

 

Continuing with Schiel & Denver Book Publishers‘s U.S. Constitution series in modern American political life, today we consider further areas of writing appropriately about our Constitution and how to frame narrative in these sensitive contexts.

The intent of the Common Laws in America was to preserve the Sovereignty and rights of all citizens in the new Republic of America known as the United States of America. Such intent shocked the world historically, lawfully, and realistically as it challenged the heart of all previously known rights of heredity, nobility, and dominion over lands and property as well as people.Sovereign, in early Webster 1828 dictionary definitions comes closest to that understood by our founding fathers:

Supreme in power; possessing supreme dominion, as a sovereign prince. God is the sovereign ruler of the universe; also supreme; pertaining to the first magistrate of a nation; as sovereign authority; also a supreme lord or ruler; one who possesses the highest authority without control. Some earthly princes, kings, and emperors are sovereigns in their domains.

And sovereignty was defined then as “Supreme power; supremacy; the possession of the highest power, or of uncontrollable power. Absolute power belongs to God only.”

It is no accident, then, that our founding fathers claimed their sovereignty came from God’s law that all men are created equal.Sovereignty had shifted to a right belonging to man, granted by the supreme ruler of the universe.People were no longer to be considered vassals, subordinates, and slaves only to serve the pleasures of sovereign earthly rulers, who usually inherited their status or won it through force and continued to exercise it over all the people and lands under their dominion.Our Nation was founded by people who claimed their freedom and sovereignty as a right derived from God.

They wanted new lives in a new country; and although there was allegiance to the old country, the intense desire to be sovereign as man was their birthright.The Great Seal for the federal government of the United States clearly affirms on its obverse Crest: a glory Orb, breaking through a cloud proper, surrounding an azure field bearing a constellation of thirteen stars argent. And on its reverse, the eye at the top of a pyramid is the Eye of Providence with the Latin motto Annuit Coeptis in the sky above – meaning It (the eye of Providence) is favorable to our undertakings or He favors our undertakings.) – Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were given the task of creating the seal on July 4, 1776 and it was officially adopted on June 20, 1782.

Sovereignty was an expression, then, of the natural, organic, God-given Right that man was created equal and such rights are natural as they are granted by the Supreme Authority: Providence. Thus, in 1772 at a Town Meeting in Boston, such rights although internationally a threat to the existing monarchy and ecclesiastical supremacy of many nations, were adopted and expanded to being;

“the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First, a Right to Life, Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can – Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature –“Sovereignty continues to explain such Natural Rights relating to Life, Liberty, and Property, and concludes the Rights of Colonists with the force majeure that:“no men or body of men, consistently with their own rights as men and citizens or members of society, can for themselves give up, or take away from others.”“First, The first positive law of all Commonwealths or States, is the establishing the legislative power; as the first fundamental natural law also, which is to govern even the legislative power itself, is the preservation of the Society.

Secondly, The Legislative has no right to absolute arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes of the people…

Thirdly, The supreme power cannot Justly take from any man, any part of his property without his consent, in person or by his Representative.”These, then, were the Colonists’ sovereign expression of the first principles of natural law and justice and the basic fundamental maxims of the Common Law: common sense and reason.And again, the Natural Rights are expressed as Declarations by an act of the early American Continental Congress at New York, on October 19, 1765. This time, however, the rights are expanded as “humble opinions” respecting the most essential rights and liberties of the Colonists to protest taxes, duties, and to assert as a seventh right to establish sovereignty:“That trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject in these colonies.”

And as an eighth right in claiming sovereignty:

“That the late act of Parliament, entitled, “An act for granting and applying certain stamp duties, and other duties in the British colonies and plantations in America, etc.” by imposing taxes on the inhabitants of these colonies, and the aid act, and several other acts by extending the jurisdiction of the courts of admiralty beyond its ancient limits, have a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonies.”

All such claim for personal Rights, as a natural course, are summarized with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence and a pledge to each other of lives, fortunes, and sacred honor of the Colonists in their Declaration of Independence, as adopted in Congress on July 4, 1776 — now a matter of the historical records of “The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the United States,” compiled under an order of the United States Senate by Ben Perley Poore, Clerk of Printing Records. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1877.

Finally, to insure that there is no doubt, even in the new country, the United States of America, a Bill of Rights is agreed to and added as the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution when ratified on December 15, 1791.

Amendment IX expressly identifies the limitation of the new federal government and re-affirms sovereignty remains in the people.

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

And with even more specificity, Amendment X expressly identifies the limitations extending from the new federal government down through the individual States by reservation, and continues to re-affirm sovereignty remaining ultimately in the people.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’

Should the States not claim sovereignty power over the federal government, when necessary; then the people are the ultimate power proving that they hold the force majeure and are the master over the servant State or federal government when not specifically delegated as a national government. The claiming of sovereignty meant freedom and liberty for all.

The Liberty Bell, to announce such ideas of sovereignty, could not ring until the people were prepared and ready to form a more perfect union and ratify a Constitution for and of the United States of America.

And such ideas of freedom and liberty had to be communicated to the common man; to all the Colonists. Thus, the Federalist Papers originally written under the name of Publius, were published and distributed to all of the thirteen proposed states.

It’s not a commonly asked question – just how many times do independent and self-published authors cite the American Constitution in their work; there are no reliable figures or clear guidelines on how to quote from the Constitution to be both legally accurate and grammatically correct. In this new series of posts, Schiel & Denver Book Publishers and Christian Book Publishers will examine the issues and over writing tips and advice. We start with an overview of that oft-cited, Boston Tea Party literature.

The Tea Party of 1773 wasn’t just the dumping of tea in Boston Harbor. It was the signal to the world that man was sovereign, had natural rights protected by laws in common, and that those rights were foremost amongst all nations. The local, Boston issue of taxation without representation only heightened the inalienable, organic rights of man.The chronology leading to the Tea Party of 1773 did not just happen with a bunch of rogues deciding to rebel against the English oppressors in a spur of the moment. There were many abuses of power leading to the Boston Tea Party; however, it is most important to historically note that it was not the Americans who signaled the first rebellion. It was Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawa Indians. And Benjamin Franklin, in 1754 then published the “Join or Die” cartoon.

Although the rough picture of a snake separated into eight pieces marked with the initials of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, was first used in an attempt to unite the colonies as early as 1754 as the Albany Plan of Union, it was premature and not supported by the Colonists until revived by Pontiac’s attack upon the British in May, l763, and made a standard by the Tea Party patriots two years later when the British passed the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, thereby allowing British soldiers to be quartered throughout the colonies.

Alarmed, the Colonists prepared to unite as they struggled to peacefully remain a colony of English rule. It simply did not work. On May 10, l773, England passed the Stamp Act claiming sovereignty over America, and resulting in Patrick Henry’s famous resolutions: the fifth summed it all.

“Resolved, therefore, that the General Assembly of this Colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes upon the inhabitants of this Colony.”

It was now clear: every attempt to vest such power in any…persons…other than the General Assembly would destroy British as well as American freedom. No taxation without representation. America would have to assert its exclusive rights.Suddenly, with this speech, Patrick Henry became a spokesman for the common people, and the two parties: Patriots, or Whigs; and Loyalists – those who remained loyal to England – also called ‘Tories”, were born.

Henry’s words became the general outcry for the Tea Party and was the beginning of the revolutionary movement in the American colonies.

The Patriots were the backbone of the Republic. The Boston Tea Party formulated between 1773 and 1776. Our country is that Nation uniting all of the colonies into one nation: the United States of America embracing a Republican form of government wherein man, the citizen, was to become the ultimate law of the land possessing original ordained rights.The Boston Tea Party was known as the “Destruction of the Tea”; but when the Patriots, as Mohawk Indians marched into town, with axes and tomahawks on their shoulders, a fifer playing by their sides, within a few days, a Boston street ballad called: “The Rallying of the Tea Party” not only identified the two leaders—Warren and Revere—by name, but gave the Tea Party its origin and history in protecting common rights.

It is no wonder, then, that this is the hallmark of liberty and freedom for every man as foreseen and upheld by our forefathers when creating the ninth and tenth Amendments to our Constitution.

“The enumeration In the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

The people, again, were the ultimate beneficiary of all rights and powers within a Republican form of government. They were protecting their voice and guarding the limited powers to be relinquished to a federal government after granting it federal authority to govern, and to become a nation subservient to the desires and wishes of the sovereign states, ultimately, represented by the people as: sovereign man.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The Tea Party of yore is very much alive today. All over America the strong desires and morals which our founding fathers clearly laid down in 1776 return for all mankind to re-assert and claim once more.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that amount these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

The expression reverberated in the hearts and minds of all men then, and needs to be restored today. Its effect, as expressed by the concluding paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, is as much alive in meaning and intent for all mankind as when expressed in 1776. The Spirit of ’76, which was so near exhaustion at Valley Forge, was kindled by such resolve.

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved, and that as Free and Independent States they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things, which Independent States may of right do — and for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Picking up where Jane Friedman, book publisher of Open Road Integrated Media, left off yesterday at Digital Book World, when she urged book publishers to broaden the participation of libraries in the distribution of ebooks, LJ’s Josh Hadro moderated a panel today that helped publishers understand why, and how, that must be accomplished.

“Consumers and library patrons are two sides of the same coin,” Hadro said to a roomful of publishers, who included execs and others from the big children’s book publishers, smaller houses, university presses, and distributors. The current one book, one loan ebook model “mirrors the print” buying and lending; “DRM [digital rights management] software [protects publishers] caus[ing] the lend to expire at the end of the loan period,” explained Hadro.

Yet many publishers still don’t sell their latest ebooks to libraries. “Current content is king,” New York Public Library’s Chris Platt said, pointing out his frustration that, “We can’t get Freedom (FSG) as a download for our library. And even though Keith Richards made a public appearance at NYPL, “We couldn’t put his epub [Life (Little, Brown)] in our collection,” said Platt. Then Platt held up The Oracle of Stamboul (HarperCollins), due out in February, another book his patrons won’t be able to borrow as an ebook.

Librarians are left trying to explain to their users both that the publisher has not made the book available through the library and that many ebooks won’t work on their users’ ereaders.

Platt further made the case that “We teach people literacy…we point [them] to your new books….Libraries are connected to many of the people you want to reach, on Twitter, Facebook.” As the price of smartphones drop, he said, libraries will be able “to serve all parts of the community.”

Ruth Liebmann, Random House VP, reinforced Platt’s remarks. “A sale is a sale,” she said, noting that libraries are a revenue stream that publishers like Random want to “protect, even grow.”

Baker & Taylor’s VP for libraries and education, George Coe, told attendees that the “acquisition model will change drastically” with the ebook. “Library budgets can’t change,” he said, but users can become buyers with “buy buttons” on library online catalogs. He cautioned, however, that by using different formats, christian book publishers are “confusing our patrons.”

OverDrive’s CEO Steve Potash also said that the idea of a library purchase “cannibalizing sales couldn’t be farther from the truth…we’re converting library borrowers into point of sale users” in the digital world. As for the one book, one user model, Potash said that OverDrive recently made Liquid Comics ebook graphic novels available via a multiple user subscription model.

Rubbishing those who hail the digital age as the end for books, book publishers industry players and best-selling authors on Saturday hailed a new dawn for publishing, with India’s voracious readers at its forefront.

Book sales have been squeezed in recent years by e-books and the huge success of Amazon.Com’s Kindle reader, but India’s booming book publishers market is proof of the physical book’s staying power, said participants at Asia’s largest literary event, the DSC Jaipur Literary Festival.

“You read something on Twitter and you know it is ephemeral,” said Patrick French, a best-selling historian and biographer who has written extensively on Asia. “Yet the book is a solid thing. The book endures.”

Regional language novelists and poets rubbed shoulders with Nobel laureates and Booker Prize winners at the seventh festival to be held in the historical pink-tinged city of Jaipur, the capital of India’s northwestern Rajasthan state.

Hundreds of book lovers attended a debate on the fate of printed books in the sun-drenched grounds of a former palace as part of the free five-day event.

“The idea of the book dying comes up all the time. It’s wrong. I think this is a wonderful time for books, to enlarge the audience of the book and draw in more readers,” said John Makinson, Chairman and CEO of the Penguin Group of publishers.

“Books matter more in India than anywhere else we publish them,” added Makinson, whose Penguin Group is one of the world’s largest English-language book publishers.

While book sales slip in most western countries, the non-academic book market in India is currently growing at a rate of 15 to 18 percent annually, as rapid economic growth swells literacy rates and adds millions to the middle class every year.

At the festival, schoolchildren from around the country chased their authorly heroes through the lunch queues to get autographs on newly-purchased books.

Makinson noted that the pressure on physical bookshops in countries like the United States — where bookseller Borders Group Inc is in talks to secure a $500 million credit line — doesn’t exist in India, adding that books have a key role to play in Indian society.

“In India books define and create the social conversation amongst christian book publishers and children’s book publishers. In China, the books that sell well are self-improvement titles. Popular books in India are of explanations, explaining the world. The inquisitive nature of India is unique.”

Indian critic Sunil Sethi, who presents India’s most popular television program on books, said the digital age presented an opportunity, rather than a threat, for printed matter. “Even before I finish my show, the authors are on Twitter to say they are on TV talking about their book. Technology is merging things, but the book is still at the center,” Sethi said.

French agreed that technology, if well-managed, could actually help win books new friends and wider sales.

“Digital e-books have created a space for discussion. Books now have websites and forums, and so reading books on electronic devices has created communities and interaction,” he said.

Nearly 50,000 writers, critics, publishers and fans are expected to attend the festival.