Who or what killed President Zachary Taylor? — Mistakes Were Made

Zachary Taylor was the 12th President of the United States and the last slave holding person to be elected to the office. During Taylor’s Presidential tenure, slavery and the extension of it to western land was the hot button issue. California population was growing because of the gold rush and there was pressure to usher it into the union ASAP. Though Taylor was a slaveholder, Taylor was driven by a strong sense of nationalism because of his many years of military duty. Taylor believed no new states should be slave states. Taylor wanted California and New Mexico to draft their own constitutions (which likely would have excluded slavery) and skip the territorial phase. This stance outraged slavery advocates.

Some Southern leaders threatened succession. Henry Clay, who was a Senator, proposed a compromise to the slavery standstill. Under Clay’s compromise, California would be admitted as a free state, the slave trade would be abolished in Washington D.C., a strong fugitive slave law( The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850) and Utah and New Mexico established as territories. This compromise would never reach Taylor’s desk.

On July 4, 1850, Zachary Taylor attended a ceremony to lay the cornerstone of the future Washington monument. There were 3 hour’s worth of speeches in the D.C. heat that Taylor had to endure that…