Tyler was delighted with her role as first lady, redecorating the White House and establishing her own "court" of ladies-in-waiting to mimic the practices of European monarchies that she had visited years before.

She also established the tradition of playing "Hail to the Chief" when the president arrived at an event, and she popularized the waltz and polka dances in the United States.

Tyler was a fierce advocate for her husband's political priorities, organizing social events to lobby Congressmen, particularly for the Texas annexation.

During the American Civil War, she provided support to the Confederate States of America, creating a permanent rift with her family in New York.

[4] She was educated at home until she was 16 years old,[5] and she then attended the Chagaray Institute in New York, where she studied music, French literature, ancient history, arithmetic, and composition.

[3] In 1840, she shocked polite society by appearing in an advertisement for a department store, posed with an unidentified man and identified as "The Rose of Long Island".

They visited England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, and Scotland before returning to New York in September 1841.

Though the Gardiner and Tyler families grew closer, Julia initially felt little attraction to the president, who was 30 years her senior.

She refused that and later proposals he made,[2] though they reached an understanding by the following month that they would someday be wed.[6] On February 22, 1844, Gardiner, her sister Margaret, and her father joined a presidential excursion on the new steam frigate Princeton.

After arriving at the White House, she sought to make the presidential home more extravagant; she had the building cleaned, the furniture replaced, and the staff uniforms updated.

[7] Tyler became a point of contact for those wishing to receive favors from the president, and the Gardiner family in particular regularly sought support from the first lady.

[15] Among her favorite requests were those for pardons and commutations by the president, and it was Tyler's interjection that spared a convict, "Babe" the pirate, from a death sentence in New York.

[24] After the president signed off on the annexation of Texas in one of his final official acts, Tyler began wearing the pen he used around her neck.

She had her own court formed from her sister, her cousins, and her daughter-in-law, who served as her ladies-in-waiting, and she invited ladies of prominent families to join her at events and receiving lines.

[27] Though Tyler was generally popular as first lady, her love of drinking and dancing earned her the ire of religious citizens amidst the Second Great Awakening.

[31] Tyler was responsible for the care of not only her seven children, but several of her adult stepchildren, their two hired workers, and approximately 70 slaves who were made to work on the plantation.

Tyler often hosted social gatherings and long-term guests at their home, and the family regularly traveled throughout the United States for vacation and for speaking engagements.

[32] Tyler eventually bought the Villa Margaret summer home in Hampton, Virginia to accommodate their growing family.

[30] Such a public expression of political opinion was unusual for a woman in the Southern United States, but the nature of the slavery debate won acceptance for her essay among the South.

[32] In response to Tyler's essay, Harriet Jacobs, a former slave and later abolitionist writer, authored her first published work, a letter to the New York Tribune in 1853.

They went to Washington in early 1861 to alleviate the crisis, with Tyler involving herself in the city's social life to help improve Northern–Southern relations.

Then with her two youngest children, she traveled to Bermuda where she lived with other Confederates who had settled there, and she returned to her family home in New York in November 1862[36] She bitterly argued with her Unionist brother, who was eventually banished from the house after striking her.

[37] Tyler was upset to hear that Sherwood Forest Plantation had been captured while she was in New York, that her former slaves had been given the crops that they grew, and that the building was being used as a desegregated school.

The day after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, three men broke into her home demanding that she turn over her Confederate flag, searching for it after she denied having one.

[43] The economic depression that followed the Panic of 1873 depleted her finances, forcing her to sell her other properties so she could purchase Sherwood Forest Plantation back from the Bank of Virginia that had come to control it.

[51] Tyler was generally well received during her time as first lady, and she is credited with revitalizing social life in Washington after the death of her husband's first wife.

[7] She is recognized as one of the most successful hostesses in the history of the White House due to her charm and the grandiosity of her parties, and she was one of the earliest first ladies to be directly active in politics.

[46] Her prominence in Washington has prompted greater historical interest in her life compared to the less active presidential wives that immediately preceded her.

[8] Since 1982 Siena College Research Institute has periodically conducted surveys asking historians to assess American first ladies according to a cumulative score on the independent criteria of their background, value to the country, intelligence, courage, accomplishments, integrity, leadership, being their own women, public image, and value to the president.