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
Acting President of the United States orderly transfer of power following a President's death. Nonetheless, several members of Congress, such as Representative John Quincy Adams, felt that Tyler should be a caretaker under the title of "Acting President", or remain vice president in name. Senator Henry Clay saw Tyler as the "vice-president" and his presidency as a mere "regency". Throughout Tyler remained resolute in his claim to the title of President and in his determination to exercise the full powers of the presidency. The precedent he set in 1841 was followed subsequently on seven occessions when an incumbent president died, and is now enshrined in the