Compounding Tyler's misery during this period was the death of Letitia.
Tyler's wife passed away in 1842 following a second stroke, one of three first ladies to die while her husband was in office.
For the second time in two years, the White House was in mourning.
The Tyler administration's only major success during this period was ratification of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain, which settled a long-running border dispute between the state of Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick, as well as was fixing the modern border between Minnesota and Ontario.
But that was basically it, Tyler it seemed had no real policy platform of his own to offer up.
Everyone knew what he was against but what was he actually for. Tyler himself didn't seem to know most of the time.
He irritated even his closest associates with his tendency to waffle back and forth on various issues, changing his mind multiple times, and confusing everyone around him.
By the end of 1843, however, Tyler believed he'd figured out an issue that would cement his legacy as president and might even boost his third party run for re-election--the annexation of Texas.
Since 1836, the Republic of Texas had operated as an independent country following its victory in the Texas Revolution over Mexico.
But all along, Sam Houston, the Texan leadership, had been trying to convince the American government to annex them.
