Zachary Taylor

Zachary Taylor was stressed out of his job as president and on July 4, 1850, Taylor participated in Fourth of July ceremonies and refreshed himself with a pitcher of milk and bowls of cherries and pickles. Dysentery bacteria was spreading in Washington, so there is a chance that the bacteria tainted Taylor's food. Later, Taylor ended up with intestinal cramps, vomiting spells and diarrhoea. At about 10PM, Taylor has frequent spells of bloody diarrhoea and this cycle happened while doctors did whatever they could do for President Taylor, but five days later, late on July 9th, President Taylor died on July 9th, 1850.

There are lingering rumors that Taylor was poisoned by his staff. In 1991, his descendants were told by an historian to exhume Taylor's remains. Taylor's remains were examined and analysed and found low traces of arsenic that were not in enough quantities to kill Taylor. They determined that cholera mombus killed Taylor. So, Taylor was not poisoned by his enemies.

• Taylor opposed the Compromise of 1850 which was an attempt to settle the disputes about allowing slavery in the new territories and to appease the South by tightening the fugitive slave law. The compromise which proved to be failure, was passed after Taylor died.
• Clayton-Bulwer Treaty signed with Britain.This controversial treaty dealt with joint-control of any canals built across Central America
• Galphin Claim - scandal concerning kick-backs to Sec. of War Crawford from payments made to Galphin family.

(longer discussion of Taylor and the slavery issues. )

Northerners and Southerners disputed sharply whether the territories wrested from Mexico should be opened to slavery, and some Southerners even threatened secession. Standing firm, Zachary Taylor was prepared to hold the Union together by armed force rather than by compromise. Even though he was a slave-owner, Taylor did not defend slavery or southern sectionalism;

Although Taylor had subscribed to Whig principles of legislative leadership, he was not inclined to be a puppet of Whig leaders in Congress. He acted at times as though he were above parties and politics. Taylor tried to run his administration in the same rule-of-thumb fashion with which he had fought Indians.

Traditionally, people could decide whether they wanted slavery when they drew up new state constitutions. Therefore, several acute side issues: the northern dislike of the slave market operating in the District of Columbia; and the southern demands for a more stringent fugitive slave law.

In February 1850 President Taylor had held a stormy conference with southern leaders who threatened secession. He told them that if necessary to enforce the laws, he personally would lead the Army. Persons "taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang ... with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico." He never wavered.

Then events took an unexpected turn. After participating in ceremonies at the Washington Monument on a blistering July 4, Taylor fell ill; within five days he was dead.
You can't do much in 491 days.

Probably the biggest issue of the day had to do with the huge amount of land the United States had acquired over the previous few years and whether or not slavery would be allowed to spread west into the new territories. The new land was acquired through three different sources:

1. One was the annexation of Texas, which had declared its independence from Mexico about a decade earlier but had been requesting to become part of the United States.
2. Another was the HUGE part of Mexico that was ceded to the United States for $15,000,000 after Mexico lost the Mexican-American War (Mexico used to border Oregon).
3. The third was gaining sole possession of the southern half of the Oregon Country in exchange for giving Great Britain sole possession of the northern half. Previously the United States and Great Britain shared possession of the Oregon Country.

Although educated, Zachary was a poor student. His handwriting, spelling, and grammar were crude and unrefined throughout his life. Even as a boy, he wanted a career in the military; for a planter's son, it was a respectable alternative to law and the ministry.

Taylor received his first commission as an officer in 1808 and was immediately assigned to command the garrison at Fort Pickering, located in modern-day Memphis. From that moment until his election as President, Taylor was in the military, stationed at a succession of frontier outposts.

In 1810, Taylor married Margaret Mackall Smith, a member of a prominent Maryland family. They eventually had five daughters and one son, but lost two of the daughters at a young age to sickness. As Zachary moved from one wilderness outpost to another in the Mississippi Valley frontier, his family often accompanied him. In 1840, Mrs. Taylor finally settled down in Louisiana when Zachary assumed command of the fort at Baton Rouge. Although a poorly paid career officer, Taylor had parlayed the 300 acres of land given to him by his father into holdings in Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In 1850, his estate was valued at around $120,000-equivalent to $6 million today.

By 1845, Taylor had gained fame as an Indian fighter in the nation's continuing warfare against Native Americans. His service included postings in the present-day states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Kansas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas. Among other Indian battles, he engaged the Sacs, led by Chief Black Hawk, in Illinois in 1832 and the Seminoles in Florida in the late 1830s.

Taylor's willingness to share the hardships of field duty with his men earned him the affectionate nickname "Old Rough and Ready." Although he fought Native Americans in numerous engagements, much of his service was devoted to protecting their lands from invading white settlers. Taylor seemed to understand if not sympathize with the plight of the Native Americans, and he admired their style of guerrilla warfare. He frequently bemoaned the incompetence of the citizen militia units that he commanded in comparison to the superb discipline and unity of his Indian foes. For Taylor, the best solution to the ongoing wars required a strong military presence to stand between white settlers and the Native Americans. He viewed anything less as a poor and ultimately doomed solution.

It was not his success as an Indian fighter, however, that propelled Zachary Taylor into national prominence. That achievement came from his military victories against Mexican troops during the war with Mexico (1846-1848). Briefly told, when Texas was granted statehood in 1845, President James K. Polk ordered Taylor into disputed lands on the Texas-Mexico border. When Mexicans there attacked his troops near the Rio Grande River, Polk declared to Congress, in May 1846, that war had begun by an act of Mexico. Events then happened rapidly. With superior artillery, Taylor easily defeated the substantially larger Mexican forces in Palo Alto, Mexico. Taylor then attacked the "un-destroyable" city of Monterrey, inflicting heavy casualties on its Mexican defenders, leaving 800 killed or wounded.

General Winfield Scott, commander of all U.S. troops, then ordered half of Taylor's army to join his troops for an assault on Veracruz. Mexican General Santa Anna, intercepting a letter from Scott to Taylor, knew that "Old Zack" (another nickname) would be left with just 6,000 men-most of whom were nonregulars. In February 1847, Santa Anna threw his nearly 20,000 soldiers into the Battle at Buena Vista, determined to annihilate "Old Rough and Ready." The two armies clashed, and when the smoke cleared, 1,800 Mexican soldiers lay dead or wounded-Taylor lost 672. Thoroughly defeated, the "Mexican Napoleon," as Santa Anna called himself, left the field, and General Zachary Taylor became an American hero.

The word of how Old Zack had fought alongside his troops in hand-to-hand combat at both Monterey and Buena Vista spread like a prairie fire across the nation. Taylor was compared to American war heroes George Washington and Andrew Jackson in the popular press. Stories were told about his informal dress, the tattered straw hat on his head, and the casual way he always sat atop his beloved horse, "Old Whitey," while shots buzzed around his head. The criticism that he had allowed the Mexican army at Monterrey to surrender without disbanding held no sway in the popular mind