7. John Tyler helped form the Confederate States of America
John Tyler was the first man to assume the presidency due to the death of the president, William Henry Harrison. He immediately established that while the late president was a Whig, Tyler did not feel bound to toe the party line. His independent streak led to his detractors referring to him as “his accidency” and his administration was chaotic. Denied the Democratic nomination for president in 1844 and persuaded by Andrew Jackson not to run for re-election as an independent, he served only the remainder of Harrison’s term as president. One of his last acts as president was to sign the legislation annexing Texas into the Union, a goal he had strongly supported.
In retirement at his Virginia plantation, which he named Sherwood Forest, a reference to him being Robin Hood as his neighbors were mostly Whigs who believed he had robbed the party, he remained out of national politics. As events spiraled towards secession and Civil War he became more active in Virginia politics. He served in the Virginia Secession Convention which voted against secession in 1861 (he supported secession) and following the attack on Fort Sumter Virginia again voted on the issue, the second time voting to secede. He was elected to the Provisional Confederate Congress, which produced the Confederate Constitution, and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, but died in Richmond just before the House opened its first session in 1862.