“Most Awful and Most Lamentable Catastrophe - President John Tyler and the U.S.S. Princeton" Final Act

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.

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.