Tyler pushes the door shut on opponents Clay, Polk, Calhoun, and Jackson, as Uncle Sam demands that he let Clay in.
In what the Miller Center of Public Affairs considers "a serious tactical error that ruined the scheme [of establishing political respectability for him]",[150] Tyler appointed former Vice President John C. Calhoun in early March 1844 as his Secretary of State. Tyler's good friend, Virginia Representative Henry A. Wise, wrote that following the Princeton disaster, Wise on his own volition extended Calhoun the position as a self-appointed emissary of the president and Calhoun accepted. When Wise went to tell Tyler what he had done, the president was angry but felt that the action had to stand. Calhoun was a leading advocate of slavery, and his attempts to get an annexation treaty passed were resisted by abolitionists as a result. When the text of the treaty was leaked to the public, it met political opposition from the Whigs, who opposed anything that might enhance Tyler's status, as well as from foes of slavery and those who feared a confrontation with Mexico, which had announced that it would view annexation as a hostile act by the United States. 