Virginia is mother of presidents, distant cousin of VPs

BY TYLER WHITLEY
Media General News Service
Published: July 31, 2008

Although it is known as the “Mother of Presidents,“ Virginia has been less prolific in producing vice presidents.
Virginia has given birth to eight presidents, but only two vice presidents, future Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Tyler.
If Barack Obama chooses Gov. Timothy M. Kaine as his running mate, Kaine would be only the fourth vice-presidential candidate from Virginia.
The last, James G. Field of Culpeper, died in obscurity. The first, Jefferson, described the vice presidency this way:
“ . . . a more tranquil and unoffending station could not have been found for me. . . . It will give me philosophical evenings in the winter, and rural days in the summer.“
In 1841, Tyler became the first vice president to succeed to the presidency because of death, after serving only 33 days as vice president. He presided over the Senate for a total of two hours. He succeeded another Virginian, President William Henry Harrison, who died from the effects of an hourlong inaugural address that he gave in freezing weather.
Field, a Confederate Army veteran, lawyer and failed farmer, ran on the Populist ticket in 1892. Although the ticket, headed by James B. Weaver of Iowa, lost, it managed to win 1.04 million votes out of 12 million cast, and won 22 electoral votes in the West and the Midwest, a good total for a third-party candidacy.
Before he was nominated for vice president, Field served as the Democratic attorney general of Virginia from 1877 to 1881. He died in 1902 and is buried in Fairview Cemetery in Culpeper.
Fueled by a failing farm economy, the Populists elected five senators, 10 congressmen and three governors in 1892. Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, won the presidency for the second time.
According to Brent Tarter, editor of the “Dictionary of Virginia Biography” published by the Library of Virginia, Field was chosen to balance the ticket. Weaver was a former Union general. Field had risen to the rank of major in the Confederate army and had lost a leg at the Battle of Cedar Mountain. But Southern states, despite a poor farm economy, did not go along. The Populist movement did particularly poorly in Virginia.
Jefferson was the nation’s second vice president. Although of a different party than John Adams, he was elected in 1796. Adams was elected president. The presidential and vice-presidential candidates did not run then as a tandem. The vice president was the candidate who received the second-highest total of electoral votes.
As vice president for four years, Jefferson helped define the role of the presiding officer of the Senate. He wrote the Manual of Parliamentary Practice, known as Jefferson’s Manual, which still is used in the U.S. Senate and in the Virginia General Assembly.
Tyler, who was from Charles City County, had run unsuccessfully for vice president once before, in 1836. He was successful in 1840 running with Harrison under the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.“
Tyler was picked because the Whig Party thought his support of states’ rights would help in the South.
Tyler Whitley is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.