Zachary Taylor

Ever since the creation of the American presidency in 1788 and 1789 and the release of the first analyses of the men to have occupied that office, 3 presidents have served tenures so short that historians tend to exempt them from serious rankings: William Henry Harrison, James A. Garfield, and the topic of this article, Zachary Taylor. As I've explained before, I agree with some of these exemptions and disagree with others. Since Harrison died 31 days into his tenure, I echo the idea that he should be exempted from presidential rankings. Meanwhile, I disagree with the exemption of Garfield and Taylor, as they at least had time to do some things with their presidencies. And most of those actions were great. In fact, I consider Taylor to be a top 10 president.

Taylor replaced James K. Polk as president on March 4, 1849. Taylor's entry into the White House came just over a year after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on February 2, 1848. Among other things, this document required the Mexican government to cede what are now the states of California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Nevada to the US. This opened up a fierce debate about whether or not slavery should be allowed in the new territories. Even former-President Martin Van Buren was invested in the argument, establishing and running as the 1848 nominee for the anti-slavery Free Soil Party to prevent the expansion of enslavement into the Mexican Cession. However, Van Buren, alongside Democrat Lewis Cass, was defeated. Instead, Taylor, a Whig, secured the presidency.

Personally, Taylor had no issue with slavery. He was a southerner, having been born in Virginia and raised in Kentucky, and owned 300 slaves. However, prior to the presidency, he had spent practically all of his adult life in the military, even obtaining the fame that led him to the White House through his crucial victories in the Mexican-American War. This left him with a strong sense of patriotism. This fervent patriotism caused him to loathe the fact that slavery was tearing apart the country he cherished so dearly. As a result, in order to quell debate and division, Taylor spent the bulk of his brief presidency staunchly opposing the expansion of slavery.

At several points, Taylor urged New Mexico and California to submit their abolitionist state constitutions immediately, so as to prevent the addition of pro-slavery clauses. He also intercepted and blocked an attempt to annex Cuba and make it a slave state. Taylor's crusade against pro-slavery secessionism even led to him taking one of the boldest actions ever taken by a peacetime president: In February of 1850, Taylor issued a public statement threatening to hang anyone taken prisoner by the American military during a pro-slavery, southern secessionist rebellion.

Even outside of his opposition to slavery, Taylor was a great president. For example, he strongly supported the Revolutions of 1848, a series of progressive revolts that took place across Europe throughout 1848 and 1849. When a group of British explorers got lost in the Arctic, Taylor assisted London in its efforts to recover them.

On April 19, 1850, the Taylor Administration reached and signed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. Under this agreement, the British and American governments agreed to help each other build a canal in Nicaragua. To an extent, I do disagree with this. As an anti-imperialist, I'm strongly opposed to national governments intervening in the affairs of other countries, even for seemingly benign reasons like the construction of a canal. However, I still consider the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to be a good thing. This is because the document also included a pledge by London and Washington DC to stop intervening in the affairs of Central America once the canal was completed.

Unfortunately, Taylor's cabinet was also very incompetent. But in the early summer of 1850, he began planning to remove these officials in favor of more skilled politicians. As he was making these plans, though, Taylor attended a July 4th party in Washington DC. There, he consumed copious amounts of milk and cherries. Unbeknownst to Taylor, the milk and cherries were old and spoiled. Consequently, he came down with a severe stomach virus and died on July 9, 1850.

I consider Taylor's death to be one of the most tragic events in American history. Not only did a flesh-and-blood human being perish from the Earth, but this death doomed the country to civil war. With Taylor's dissipation from existence, his vice president, Millard Fillmore, took over. One of Fillmore's first actions was to approve the Compromise of 1850. Meant to settle the debate on slavery in the Mexican Cession, the proposal did do some good. It banned slavery in California, ended the importation of new slaves into Washington DC, and resolved a border dispute between Texas and New Mexico by having Texas rescind claims to New Mexico land in exchange for having the federal government pay off all debts the state gained from the Mexican-American War. Ultimately, though, I consider the Compromise of 1850 a bad thing.

The Compromise of 1850 required residents of free states to report escaped slaves that they had witnessed. This provision, known as the Fugitive Slave Act, was extremely inflammatory, and drastically worsened the growing divide over slavery. Moreover, it allowed the residents of the New Mexico and Utah Territories to vote to decide if slavery would be allowed or banned in the areas they lived in. This clause helped inspire the Kansas-Nebraska Act under Franklin Pierce, which also further drove the wedge of division into the American population.

Had Taylor never died, the Compromise of 1850 never would have been approved. The proposal, by establishing popular sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico, posed the threat of allowing slavery in much of the Mexican Cession. Taylor, an opponent of allowing slavery in any area of the Mexican Cession, never would have let that happen. That means no Fugitive Slave Act and no Kansas-Nebraska Act, hence delaying the civil war or outright preventing it.

Zachary Taylor, despite his personal faults, was the final effective barrier between America's dignity and respect for its founding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and continual, unrelenting capitulation to the slaveholder. With Taylor's death, the Union began to slowly dissolve.