Zachary Taylor 12th President (1849-1850) Date of Birth: 24.11.1784 Country: USA

1. Zachary Taylor: The Unpolitical President
2. Early Life and Military Service
3. The 1848 Presidential Election
4. A Presidency Guided by Ad-Hoc Decisions
5. The California Crisis and the 1850 Compromise

Zachary Taylor: The Unpolitical President

Elected as the 12th President of the United States in 1849, Zachary Taylor's distinguished military career paved the way for his political success. His pivotal victories in the Mexican War propelled him into prominence, a popularity that the Whig Party leveraged for political gain. Notably, Taylor's presidency marked the first time a professional soldier occupied the White House.

Early Life and Military Service

Born in Orange County, Virginia, on November 24, 1784, Taylor's family relocated to the frontier region of Kentucky shortly after his birth. His father, an affluent farmer, had served as an officer during the Revolutionary War. After receiving a basic education, Taylor enlisted in the army in 1808. In 1810, he married Margaret Mackall Smith of Maryland, with whom he had six children.

Throughout his military career, Taylor fought in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, the Second Seminole War, and the Mexican War. As a major general, he earned the nickname "Old Rough and Ready" for his bravery. His resounding victory at Buena Vista in February 1847, where he led his numerically inferior force to defeat the Mexican army, made him a national hero.

The 1848 Presidential Election

When the Whigs nominated Taylor as their presidential candidate in 1848, they gambled on a man with little political experience. However, the Democratic Party faced even greater challenges. Deeply divided internally, they presented a candidate with a divisive platform: Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan advocated for "popular sovereignty," giving territories and states the authority to decide on slavery. This approach threatened to overturn the landmark Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had kept slavery out of the northern territories.

The Democratic Party's woes were further compounded by the emergence of the Free Soil Party, a breakaway faction of Northern Democrats who opposed the expansion of slavery into new territories. Led by Martin Van Buren, they drew support from those who rejected slavery's spread into the newly acquired Mexican Cession.

Despite Northern Whig support for the Wilmot Proviso, which prohibited slavery in any newly acquired territory, and their opposition to Cass's "popular sovereignty," the Whig Party remained deliberately vague on the issue of slavery in their platform. By nominating Taylor, a Southern slaveholder, the Whigs sought to appeal to both Northern and Southern voters with a campaign centered entirely on Taylor's personality.

Taylor's Southern roots, cotton plantation in Mississippi, and ownership of nearly 100 slaves did not hinder his electoral strategy. His military glory overshadowed these facts, and he emerged victorious in the election, which featured nationwide voting for the first time. In the South, he captured 51% of the popular vote. In the North, the Free Soil Party hurt the Democrats more than the Whigs. Van Buren's 10% share of the popular vote in New York State, which had previously been lost by the Democratic Party, ultimately helped deliver the state to Taylor, tipping the balance in his favor. The high voter turnout of 72.7% reflected the growing importance of elections in the increasingly democratic United States. Taylor won 163 electoral votes, while Cass received 127. Millard Fillmore, a liberal Whig from New York, became Vice President.

A Presidency Guided by Ad-Hoc Decisions

Few presidents in American history entered office with such a lack of political understanding as Zachary Taylor. It was assumed that Taylor, as an unpolitical president, would defer to Congress for legislative initiatives and focus solely on enforcing the laws. Initially, his vice president, the politically savvy Fillmore, guided his actions. However, Fillmore was soon replaced in this role by William H. Seward, a Massachusetts senator who convinced Taylor to bolster the Whig Party through strategic patronage.

Taylor's lack of political acumen was balanced by his willingness to make ad-hoc decisions that often lacked the sophistication required for complex political matters. His cabinet included John M. Clayton as Secretary of State, an inexperienced foreign policy official whose clumsy diplomatic handling nearly led to a diplomatic rupture with France. On the other hand, Taylor secured a significant foreign policy success with the signing of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty with Great Britain in April 1850. This agreement bound both nations to refrain from annexing or colonizing parts of Central America.

During the year of Taylor's election, gold was discovered in California's Sacramento Valley. The ensuing years, known as the California Gold Rush, witnessed an influx of tens of thousands of people. When California applied for statehood as a free state in October 1849, the question of "the peculiar institution," as slavery was euphemistically called in the South, became a pressing national concern.

Soon after taking office in March, Taylor advised the settlers to make this move; he now urged Congress to comply as the California Constitutional Convention had outlawed slavery. Taylor also stated that New Mexico would likely follow California's lead.

The California Crisis and the 1850 Compromise

The Californians had already elected representatives and senators to Congress in Washington. However, they had neglected to secure Congressional approval for this action, as stipulated by law. Many Congressmen, who had grown wary of the expanding power of the presidency since the Jacksonian era, felt that they had been deliberately bypassed.

Southern Congressmen were particularly upset, viewing Taylor's proposal as a blatant attempt to weaken the South and, by extension, the institution of slavery. Some were willing to accept California as a free state if the federal government guaranteed the preservation of slavery elsewhere. The reaction of Southern Congressmen must also be understood within a larger context: in 1789, the South comprised 40% of the white population of the United States; by 1850, that figure declined to 31%. This demographic shift affected the number of Southern representatives in Congress. While the South held 46% of the seats in the House of Representatives in 1789, it accounted for only 38% in 1850. Despite the equal balance between the North and South in the Senate, California's admission as the thirty-first state threatened to disrupt this balance. This shift of power within Congress explains the growing anxiety of Southern Congressmen, who now felt the need to defend their interests more assertively and aggressively.

For over eight months, Congress grappled with California's admission and its related political complications. Senator John Calhoun of South Carolina took the most extreme stance, warning in March 1850 that the secession of Southern states could only be averted if Congress guaranteed the admission of slavery to all territories and maintained a permanent equilibrium between free and slave states.

As in the case of Missouri in 1820, Senator Henry Clay once again proposed an escape from the impending impasse. His proposal included keeping California a free state, allowing the territories of New Mexico and Utah to determine their own status, giving Texas concessions from New Mexico in exchange for ten million dollars in federal funds, abolishing the slave trade (but not slavery) in the District of Columbia, and strengthening the fugitive slave laws to safeguard slave-owning rights in Southern states.

In Congress, Whigs like Daniel Webster and Democrats like Lewis Cass and Stephen A. Douglas advocated for the bipartisan endorsement of this compromise. The Northern wing of the Whigs, including Taylor, rejected the concessions to slave-state interests as excessive. When Southern Congressmen responded by renewing their protests against California's free-state status and even threatening secession, Taylor's military background surfaced. He warned them against any violation of the law banning slavery in California, threatening severe penalties. Taylor's Southern roots notwithstanding, his military career had taught him to prioritize national unity over regional interests.

While Congress wrestled with a resolution, Taylor unexpectedly died in the White House on July 9, 1850. During the Independence Day celebrations, he had spent excessive time under the scorching summer sun. Upon returning exhausted from the festivities, he consumed large quantities of fresh fruit and ice-cold milk, developing cramps and a deadly intestinal disorder as a result.

Taylor's untimely death provided an impetus for the pro-Union factions, who were able to secure Congress's swift passage of the Compromise of 1850, the framework of which Clay had crafted months earlier. Persistent rumors of Taylor's alleged poisoning led to his exhumation in 1891, and forensic analysis definitively ruled out murder.