originally paid $1,150 for designing and outfitting Princeton, sought another $15,000 for his additional efforts and expertise. He sued Stockton for payment and won in court, but the funds were never appropriated. Stockton went on to serve as Military Governor of California and a United States Senator from New Jersey. Ericsson had a distinguished career in naval design and is best known for his work on USS Monitor, the U.S. Navy's first ironclad warship. To succeed Gilmer as Secretary of the Navy, Tyler appointed John Y. Mason, another Virginian; John C. Calhoun was Tyler's replacement for Secretary of State Upshur. Upshur was about to win Senate approval of a treaty annexing Texas when he died. Under Calhoun, annexation was delayed and became a principal issue in the presidential election of 1844. Julia Gardiner, who was below deck on Princeton when her father David died in the Peacemaker explosion, became First Lady of the United States four months later. She had declined President Tyler's marriage proposal a year earlier, and sometime in 1843, they agreed they would marry but set no date. The President had lost his first wife in September 1842, and at the time of the explosion, he was almost 54. Julia was not yet 24. She later explained that her father's death changed her feelings for the President: "After I lost my father I felt differently toward the President. He seemed to fill the place and to be more agreeable in every way than any younger man ever was or could be." Because he had been widowed less than two years and her father had died so recently, they married in the presence of just a few family members in New York City on June 26, 1844. A public announcement followed the ceremony. They had seven children before Tyler died in 1862, and his wife never remarried. In 1888, Julia Gardiner told journalist Nellie Bly that at the moment of the Peacemaker explosion, "I fainted and did not revive until someone was carrying me off the boat, and I struggled so that I almost knocked us both off the gangplank". She said she later learned that President Tyler was her rescuer. Some historians question her account. The Peacemaker disaster prompted a reexamination of the process used to manufacture cannons. This led to the development of new techniques that produced cannons that were stronger and more structurally sound, such