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ALS, one page, 7.75 x 10, August 20, 1836. Handwritten letter to Secretary of the Senate Walter Lowrie, in part: "Will you do me the favour with as little delay as possible to have copied and forwarded me the resolutions offered by myself to the Senate last winter on the subject of abolishing slavery in the District. A loose sheet of the journal would be better than a copy." In fine condition.
A former governor of Virginia, Tyler was elected to the Senate in 1827 and served as chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia from 1834 to 1836. In 1835, Tyler expressed outrage at abolitionists who had used the mail to distribute anti-slavery materials throughout the South—creating a situation where the debate over slavery and the right to free speech intersected. Abolitionists sought to end slavery in Washington D.C., which was under Congressional jurisdiction and which they called 'the grand point of attack' against Southern slavery, believing that the emancipation of the capital's slaves would lead to the collapse of the institution elsewhere.
Following his 1831 election to Congress, former president John Quincy Adams initiated an extensive petition campaign in protest of the continuation of slavery in Washington, D.C. As chair of the Committee on the District of Columbia, Tyler was shocked and outraged when northern abolitionists launched their campaign for the exclusion of slavery from the district. In 1835, Tyler offered a resolution arguing that abolishing slavery in Washington 'without the consent of the owners, would be unjust and despotic, and in violation of the Constitution of the United States.' At the time of the present letter, Tyler had resigned from Congress and was vying for the vice presidency as a Whig in the 1836 election: in the aftermath of the Nat Turner's Rebellion and other events, slavery emerged as an increasingly prominent political issue, and the Whigs opposed federal intervention into the issue of slavery.
Slavery would not be abolished in the District of Columbia until the Compensated Emancipation Act was enacted on April 16, 1862, which immediately emancipated all enslaved people in Washington, D.C., and set aside $1 million to compensate slaveholders loyal to the U.S. government.
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