The Toll of Ambition: First Lady Letitia Tyler’s Silent Struggle

John Tyler’s national political career began in December 1816, when he entered the House of Representatives as a newly-elected congressman from the Charles City district of Virginia. He would serve in Congress until March 1821, when he resigned to be with his family.

Politics, however, proved to be an irresistible lure. In December 1823, Tyler went back to the Virginia House of Delegates, where he had begun his political career in December 1811 at the age of twenty-one, and then got elected as the Old Dominion’s governor in 1825. The Virginia legislature elected him U.S. Senator in 1827.

Tyler’s long absences from Virginia as a congressman and senator—he spent six months of every year in Washington—affected both the physical and mental health of his wife, Letitia. Already cursed with a less-than-robust constitution and burdened by eight pregnancies over the course of her marriage, Letitia suffered agonizing migraines that often confined her to bed. As Christopher J. Leahy notes in President Without a Party: The Life of John Tyler (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020, p. 96), when it came time for her husband to leave for Washington, Letitia exhibited signs of what physicians of her time referred to as “hysteria,” the physical symptoms of a woman’s poor health that defied a purely medical explanation.

Letitia’s physical symptoms were psychosomatic. In the nineteenth century, “hysteria” also referred to what would later be called depression. Letitia Tyler simply could not deal with her husband’s long absences, and she realized that his national political career was more important to him than emotional intimacy and ensuring her happiness. Making matters worse, Tyler became an absentee father and saddled Letitia with most of the responsibilities of child rearing.

Why It Matters

Letitia Tyler’s experience reminds us that the personal costs of public life were not limited to the politicians themselves. Behind every rising statesman stood a woman navigating isolation, illness, and social expectation in silence. In many ways, Letitia’s quiet endurance foreshadowed the emotional burdens carried by generations of First Ladies who followed.

Citation

Christopher J. Leahy, President Without a Party: The Life of John Tyler (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020), p. 96.

Image: Letitia Christian Tyler, First Lady of the United States (ca. 1830s). Artist unknown. Oil on canvas. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Letitia_Tyler.jpg

*** History in Two Voices is a nonpartisan, educational platform. Our posts explore historical events and figures for the purpose of public history and scholarship — not to advance any political viewpoint or agenda.

Categories: First Ladies, John Tyler, Early Republic, Women’s History, Mental Health in History
Tags: Letitia Tyler, John Tyler, First Lady History, 19th Century Women, White House History, History in Two Voices