By Edwin Cooney
“Stop your nonsense and drink your whiskey,” General Zachary Taylor is said to have responded to the Whig Party politician who first broached the idea of his running for President of the United States.
He was sixty-four years old when he was elected America’s twelfth president and he’d never voted in his life -- let alone run for any political office. He wasn’t particularly famous until he was sixty-one when, during the Mexican War, he prevailed at the Battle of Palo Alto on May 8th, 1846. Despite being outnumbered two to one, using superior firepower, he overwhelmed Mexico’s General Mariano Arista thus driving him well south of the Rio Grande, our demarcation of the American Mexican border.
For that spectacular victory he was made a Brevet Major General and received a formal letter of thanks from Congress for “the enterprise, skill and courage” he demonstrated in operations on the Rio Grande.
However, although he drove Mexican General Pedro de Ampudia’s superior forces from the city of Monterey, on September 25th, 1846, he was severely reprimanded by the Polk Administration for allowing the Mexicans to get away with all of their sidearms and even some artillery in exchange for occupying the city. Even more, he’d agreed not to pursue de Ampudia for eight weeks. Taylor replied that the United States had an obligation to limit bloodshed as well as show magnanimity when it could even during wartime. The Polk Administration subsequently stripped Taylor of about two-thirds of his forces and turned them over to General Winfield Scott. Taylor, rather than resigning his command as he believed he was being pressured to do, continued on with a much reduced army. Still he continued to conquer.
On February 23rd, 1847 at the Battle of Buena Vista, “Old Rough and Ready” (as he had long been called) defeated the infamous General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Santa Anna, you’ll recall, was the Mexican general who had slaughtered Colonel Travis, Jim Bowie, and the legendary Davy Crockett at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. As he had done eleven years previously, Santa Anna warned Taylor (who was outnumbered four to one) that if he didn’t surrender, he and all of his men would be slaughtered. Like Colonel Travis before him, Taylor refused to surrender, but unlike Travis, Taylor prevailed and Santa Anna retreated. Thus a genuine war hero, Zachary Taylor became a leading Whig Party candidate for President of the United States.
Nominated on the fourth ballot at the June 1848 Whig Party Convention, candidate Taylor inadvertently refused to accept the letter sent him by the convention’s chairman notifying him of his nomination. Back then, postage was often paid by the recipient rather than the sender of letters. As a Mexican War hero, Taylor was getting so many unpaid letters from all over the country that he requested that unpaid mail should not be delivered to him. Hence, official notification that he was the Whig presidential nominee landed in the dead letter office. Finally, the Whig Convention chairman realized what had happened and sent General Taylor a postage paid notification of his nomination which he, of course, accepted. That November 7th, Taylor defeated Lewis Cass of Michigan, the Democratic nominee, by collecting 1,260,101 popular votes to Cass’s 1,220,544. In the Electoral College, General Taylor defeated Senator Cass 163 to 127. Taylor and Cass each carried fifteen states. Although Zachary Taylor became the fourth president elected from a state other than his native state, he became the first president to be elected while losing his native state (Virginia) to his opponent. By 1848, Taylor was a resident of the state of Louisiana.
Zachary Taylor’s presidency would last for only sixteen months and four days—March 5th, 1849 to July 9th, 1850. His presidential achievements were few in number and small in consequence.
In December 1849, he signed a Treaty of Amity with the Hawaiian Islands. Less than three months before Taylor’s untimely death, the Senate ratified the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty with Great Britain in April 1850 which declared that any canal built through Central America would be open to all shipping and would be the property of no nation. (It would be abrogated by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty in 1901.)
That was it. The Taylor Presidency would mostly reflect the person of the president.
Zachary Taylor, named after his paternal grandfather, was born on November 24th, 1784 in Montebello, Orange County, Virginia. His parents, Richard and Sarah (Sally) Dabney Strother Taylor, had stopped at Montebello on their way west to their new home near Louisville, Kentucky.
Richard Taylor was a well-to-do planter who owned some 10,000 acres of land in Kentucky. The elder Taylor had served in the Continental Army during the Revolution and eventually served as a Justice of the Peace and as a county magistrate in northern Kentucky.
President Taylor’s mother, Sally Taylor, a well-educated woman for her time, suffered from a disabling injury when molten led was spilled on her hands while she was helping make bullets—perhaps during the American Revolution. She would give birth to eight children, Zachary being her third child.
On May 3, 1808, young Taylor was assigned First Lieutenant of the Seventh Army Regiment in Indiana territory. For the next forty years, with only a brief interruption in 1815-16, he would be a soldier. A veteran of the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War 1832, the second Seminole War (1837-40), he would be known as an “Indian fighter.” What stands out most however is who he was.
By birth, he was the second cousin of President James Madison—who was also Virginia- born. That means that he and Madison shared a great grandfather. He was a fourth cousin once removed of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which means that he and FDR’s great great great grandfathers were first cousins once removed.
In 1835, Zachary Taylor’s second oldest daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor, married Jefferson Davis who would go on to be the President of the Confederate States of America. Taylor opposed the match because he didn’t want his daughter to have to live the life of a military officer’s wife. It is even said that Davis and Taylor considered settling their differences in a duel, but that didn’t happen. The couple was married on June 17th, 1835 near Louisville, Kentucky and settled in Mississippi. Tragically, while visiting friends near St. Francisville, Louisiana in September of that year, both came down with malaria. Davis recovered, but Sarah died.
President Taylor was personally affable -- especially gallant around women – straight-forward in speech and when expressing his opinions, politically unsophisticated, and even occasionally naive. He stood about five feet eight inches and weighed about two hundred pounds as President. He had short bowed legs, long gangly arms, a long thin face with a long nose, all topped by thick graying hair. He habitually stood with one hand behind his back.
Although he was constitutionally required to take the presidential oath at noon on March 4th, 1849, that date fell on a Sunday for the second time in our history. President Taylor, perhaps out of respect for his extremely religious wife Margaret (Peggy) Mackall Smith, refrained from taking the presidential oath on the Sabbath. President James Knox Polk’s term ended at noon the day before. Thus, for twenty-four hours America was technically without a president. However, some believe that David Rice Atchison of Missouri, then serving as Senate President Pro Tempore during that twenty-four hour time period was in fact our twelfth president. When Atchison died in 1886 the state of Missouri paid $15,000 for his monument which states that Senator Atchison was President of the United States for one day. Under the Judiciary Act of 1792, the President Pro Tempore ranked behind the Vice President in order of succession to the presidency. (Note: The 1792 Judiciary Act was amended by the Judiciary Act of 1887 which placed the Secretary of State in line behind the Vice President. That was further amended by the Judiciary Act of 1947 which places the Speaker of the House, then the President Pro Tempore of the Senate behind the Vice President, followed by the cabinet largely in order of office seniority beginning with the Secretary of State.)
The major issue facing President Taylor, as it did all presidents at the time, was slavery. Although master of one hundred slaves, President Taylor opposed the expansion of slavery. He warned those congressmen who threatened to lead a secession movement that if they did, he’d hang them quicker than he’d hung deserters during the Mexican War. There was also a border dispute between slave-holding Texas and the free territory of New Mexico which President Taylor suggested should be settled by the Supreme Court. When Texans threatened to invade New Mexico, Taylor told them that if they did, he’d personally lead troops against them.
President Taylor believed it was unconstitutional for the government to involve itself in any way in the slavery question. He let it be known that he’d veto the “Compromise of 1850,” then being debated in Congress, which would admit California as a free state, end the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and institute the fugitive slave law. His position on the slavery issue was much like that of those who today oppose gay marriage. He insisted that if the government could make slavery lawful or unlawful it could dictate the relationship between husbands and wives—thus his opposition.
Thursday, July 4th, 1850 was, as usual, hot in Washington. President Taylor attended Independence Day ceremonies and laid the cornerstone at the newly constructed Washington monument. He listened to two hours of patriotic speeches before heading back to the White House. Hot and thoroughly exhausted, the President refreshed himself by wolfing down a bowl of cherries and a pitcher of ice milk. He was painfully ill within hours. His physician, Dr. Alexander S. Wotherspoon diagnosed cholera morbus which was common in summertime Washington, D.C. where unsanitary conditions often made it dangerous to consume locally grown fruit or dairy products.
The President recovered briefly on July 5th, but soon the illness took hold. On July 9th, the President knew he was dying. His last words around six p.m. were, “I’m dying and I expect the summons soon. I regret nothing, but I am sorry to be leaving my friends.”
It’s fitting somehow that Zachary Taylor, plain and always unpretentious, is remembered more as a man than as a president. It’s not hard, somehow, to believe that Zachary Taylor would prefer it just that way!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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