Acting President of the United States On April 4, 1841, only one month after his inauguration, President William Henry Harrison died. He was the first U.S. president to die in office. Afterward, a constitutional crisis ensued over the Constitution's ambiguous presidential succession provision (). Shortly after Harrison's death, his Cabinet met and decided that Vice President John Tyler would assume the responsibilities of presidency under the title "Vice-President acting President". Instead of accepting the Cabinet's proposed title, however, Tyler asserted that the Constitution gave him full and unqualified powers of the office and had himself sworn in immediately as President, setting a critical precedent for an
Arthur Annesley (1760–1841) Arthur Annesley (1760–1841) Arthur Annesley (1760 - 20 January 1841) was a British land-owner and a Member of Parliament for Oxford from 1790 to 1796. Arthur Annesley was born in 1760 and baptised on 16 August 1760, the eldest son of Arthur Annesley of Bletchington, Oxfordshire, who died in February 1773, and his wife, Elizabeth Baldwin. He married, on 1 February 1785, Catherine Hardy, daughter of Admiral Sir Charles Hardy, and had the following children together: Annesley served as Sheriff of Oxfordshire for a year, beginning in 1784. In 1790, "the Hon." Peregrine Bertie, brother of the fourth Earl of