At sunrise on April 5, a messenger from Washington knocks on the door of Tyler’s Williamsburg, Virginia, home to pass along the grim news. Tyler tells his family over an early breakfast and then begins the 150-mile journey to Washington. He travels twenty-one hours by steamship and then train. He arrives at 4:00 a.m. the next morning, eager to be sworn in. Tyler immediately summons Federal District Court judge William Cranch to his room at Brown’s Indian Queen Hotel to deliver the oath.
