The wounded and
dead were transported to Washington, with the dead lying in state until
Saturday, March 2, when a funeral, rivaling that of President Harrison three
years before was held in the capital.
The explosion of the “Peacemaker” was the greatest peacetime disaster
the United States
had experienced. The arrangements were
full of solemn ceremony and thousands lined the streets of the capital as the
funeral procession made its way to the Congressional Ceremony.
After his
earlier narrow escape from death, President Tyler faced it yet again on his
trip back from the funeral. As the
President’s carriage prepared to return to the White House something spooked
the horses causing the carriage to race out of control down Pennsylvania Avenue, which was still
packed with mourners. The horses
galloped through the heart of the market district, with people hurling
themselves out of the way. Tyler and his
son desperately attempted to help the driver to gain control but were
unsuccessful, and it was not until an unidentified black man stepped into the
street and stopped the team that Tyler
was saved from serious injury.
The final toil of the accident had far greater
implications than the deaths. The deaths
of Upshur and Gilmer deprived Tyler of his two
best people working on the Texas
issue and the most important architects of the administration’s annexation
policy. Issac Van Zandt, the Texas diplomat who
helped forge the treaty, wrote President Anson Jones, “occurrence will have, I
fear, and unfavorable influence on our affairs here. Texas
has lost two of her best friends in this country; their places will be
difficult to fill.”
Abolitionist enemies of the Tyler
administration saw the explosion of the Princeton
as an act of Providence which, in the judgment
of Joshua Leavitt, “will probably defeat the Texas scheme for present.” Abolitionists hoped that Tyler
would not be able to annex Texas prior to the presidential election, opening the way for a anti-annexationist candidate who
once and for all would scuttle the Texas
project.
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| President Tyler |
John C. Calhoun was appointed as Secretary of
State (under pressure from Virginia Senator Henry Wise) soon after the
accident. Supposed fears of Texas annexation as a
slave state plot were confirmed in the minds of Northern politicians, who
fearing the loss of Congressional power, joined abolitionists in their
opposition. Former President Martin Van
Buren led the effort to defeat the treaty and it would not be ratified until
the last minutes of Tyler’s
presidency – crushing his hopes to use annexation as a springboard to another
term.
The inventor Ericsson, so disgusted by the
board of inquiry that followed, vowed never to work for the U.S. Navy
again. Stockton
was exonerated of any culpability for the accident and went on to grab California from the
Mexicans during the Mexican War. The Navy saw the Princeton
as a jinxed ship and although she served in the Mexican War, she had a very
short five-year career. She was
underappreciated, with her innovations never understood. The Navy Department
quickly decommissioned, broke up, and scrapped the vessel that had ushered in
the age of steam-driven iron navies.
