I knew very little about Zachary Taylor going into this read except that he was known as “Old Rough and Ready” and died early in his term supposedly from eating too many cherries. I knew, from a very brief internet search, that his wife actively did not want him to run for president and that she passed off the entertaining duties of First Lady to her daughter. I learned a little more about each of them by reading the brief biography of Zachary Taylor by John S. D. Eisenhower in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s The American Presidents Series.
More than half the book focuses on Zachary Taylor’s military career, on which he built his very brief political career. Taylor, a gentleman farmer from a prominent family, first joined the army in 1808, served in the War of 1812, and became president based on his leadership in the Mexican-American War (when he was in his sixties!). He was elected president later the same year the war ended. Apparently long furloughs for army officers were common in the years between wars, so he spent his time between his plantations in Kentucky and Louisiana and his service at relatively remote military outposts on the frontier. It was unclear from the biography how much time his wife, Margaret, whom he married in 1810, spent at these military outposts or war camps, though the author describes her as “devoted” and a “conscientious helpmeet” who likely spent at least some of her time travelling to be with him. I wish I could have learned more about their marriage.
The remainder of the book deals with the politics behind the 1848 election and the issues Taylor dealt with during his 16 months in office. One of the driving presumptions of the book is that Taylor, had he lived to serve a full term or two, might have had the most success in postponing or even preventing the Civil War because he was a southern slaveholder who did not support the unmitigated spread of slavery to new states and territories. As such, there is much discussion of the political debates surrounding statehood for Texas, California, New Mexico, and Utah – how their status as slave or free could upset the voting balance in the Senate, issues that were not resolved until shortly after his death with the Compromise of 1850.
In brief snippets throughout the book we learn of Taylor’s family life, but it is never really enough to paint a full picture. We know he and Margaret Mackall Smith met and were married in 1810 while Taylor was on extended leave in Louisville. We know they had six children, half of whom died young and tragically, including a daughter who married future Confederate President Jefferson Davis only to die of malaria very shortly after their nuptials. When his wife and four daughters suffered with measles in 1820, two of them died and his wife’s health was left “permanently impaired” (described in the timeline at the back of the book as “semi-invalid”). It was, in part, this impaired health that prevented Mrs. Taylor from taking on her expected duties as First Lady. In fact, she so badly wanted a simple domestic life with her husband after the Mexican War, that she actively prayed that someone else would receive the Whig nomination instead of Taylor. Upon Taylor's election to the Presidency, Mrs. Taylor agreed to live at the White House on the compromise that while her husband ran politics and her daughter, Betty Bliss, entertained on the main floor, she enjoyed her simpler domestic life upstairs. Such living arrangements led people to spread rumors that Mrs. Taylor was a simple-minded recluse, while in reality she was likely an educated woman since she came from a prominent family even before marriage. Mrs. Taylor shunned the typical public life of a president’s wife, but she ruled domestic life at the White House, remaining genial and welcoming to the many relatives and personal guests who passed through.
A few other interesting things of note that came from this book:
1) While it is true that President Taylor ate large quantities of apples and cherries several days before his death, it is unlikely they were the cause of his death from an unidentified bodily infection. Apparently, other prominent people, including John Clayton, William Seward, George Crawford, and William Bliss, suffered from similar symptoms without having eaten the massive amounts of fruits.
2) Mrs. Taylor refused to have her husband buried in Washington, D.C., and instead insisted he be buried on a family plantation in Louisville, KY, finally getting him settled there four months after his death.
3) Apparently, Zachary Taylor coined the term “First Lady,” but not in reference to his own wife or daughter; rather, he used it to describe Dolley Madison at her funeral in 1849 after which it came to apply to the wives of presidents more generally.
