Zachary Taylor: Brief

01VOA Learning English presents America's Presidents.

02Today we are talking about Zachary Taylor, the 12th president.

03He took office in 1849.

04Taylor had some things in common with earlier presidents.

05Like six others before him, he was born in Virginia.

06Like George Washington and Andrew Jackson, Taylor was a war hero.

07And, like William Henry Harrison, he died in office.

08But Taylor brought at least one special trait to the presidency.

09Although he was officially elected as a member of the Whig Party, Taylor considered himself an independent.

10When Zachary Taylor was a baby, his family left Virginia.

11They moved west to a tobacco plantation in Kentucky.

12There, the Taylors were financially successful.

13By the time Zachary was a young man, his family owned a number of enslaved people and over 4,000 hectares of land.

14Taylor took possession of some of his family's land.

15He also had cotton plantations in the southern states of Mississippi and Louisiana.

16He, too, depended on enslaved people to do most of the work.

17But Taylor was unlike many wealthy farmers in the South.

18He had always wanted to be a soldier.

19When Taylor was 24 years old, he became an officer in the U.S.

20Army.

21Shortly after, he married Margaret Smith.

22In time, they had five daughters and one son.

23But Taylor directed most of his attention to his military career.

24For about 20 years, he tried to keep peace between Native American tribes and white Americans.

25Sometimes, the job meant leading attacks against Native Americans.

26At times, it meant defending their lands from white settlers.

27In either case, his public standing as a good soldier grew.

28His troops called him old, rough, and ready because he was willing to fight and suffer alongside them.

29Then, in the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, Taylor became really famous.

30He led U.S.

31troops to victory in several major battles, including ones at Monterrey and Buena Vista.

32In a well-known story, the powerful Mexican general Santa Ana surrounded Taylor and his small number of troops.

33Santa Ana sent a message demanding that they surrender.

34Taylor reportedly said, Tell him to go to hell.

35The two sides clashed the next morning.

36Santa Ana had about three times the men that Taylor had.

37Yet, by late that day, Taylor's soldiers had defeated Santa Ana's.

38Taylor's success as a general helped the United States win the war against Mexico.

39In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico agreed to give up claims to, or sell to the U.S., more than 1.3 million kilometers of its lands, including what are now the states of Texas and California.

40But the new lands almost immediately caused problems.

41At the time of the next U.S.

42presidential election, public opinion in the country was severely divided.

43The issue was whether to permit slavery in the new lands one at the end of the war with Mexico.

44In general, Northerners opposed expanding slavery.

45In general, Southerners supported it.

46To appeal to both these groups, the major parties at the time looked to Taylor to be their candidate for president.

47The Democrats, and the Whigs, reasoned that Taylor was already well-known and well-liked.

48Historian Michael Holtz said, in 1848, Taylor was the most popular man in America.

49But Taylor was not really political.

50He called himself an independent.

51He shared some beliefs with both major parties at the time.

52But mostly, he wanted to keep the nation together.

53In the end, he agreed to be the candidate of the Whig Party.

54During the campaign, he did not take a stand on any of the major issues.

55His fame as a military general carried him into the White House.

56The truth was that Taylor did have an opinion on slavery.

57He did not want to expand it.

58Especially in areas that did not support cotton or sugar farms.

59So, once in office, he proposed a change to the rules about how new territories would become states.

60The change would let White, American, male settlers in California and New Mexico decide whether they wanted slavery.

61Taylor aimed to quiet the debate about slavery.

62But his idea angered almost everybody.

63Some U.S.

64lawmakers believed the president had cut them out of the decision.

65Northerners said Taylor's proposal did not go far enough.

66It did not solve some of the other issues related to slavery.

67And Southerners realized that settlers in California and New Mexico would almost surely reject slavery and give free states a majority in Congress.

68In one dramatic incident, some South Carolina officials called a meeting to discuss withdrawing from the Union.

69In answer, Taylor threatened to hang them.

70But before Taylor or his idea could get too far, the president became sick.

71The story is that he attended outdoor celebrations to mark the nation's birthday, July 4th.

72Then he went for a walk.

73The weather was very hot.

74To cool off, Taylor ate uncooked fruit and drank iced milk.

75That night, he told others about pain in his stomach.

76Five days later, he was dead.

77His doctor wrote that Taylor died of cholera morbus, a general term for severe digestive problems.

78A few people thought he might have been poisoned.

79The suspicion remained until 1991, when medical officials examined Taylor's remains.

80They confirmed that he died of natural causes.

81A more recent study offers more details.

82Jane McHugh and Philip A.

83Makoviak say that Taylor was a victim of the same problem that killed Presidents William Henry Harrison and James Polk.

84Dirty water in the White House.

85Taylor's death, while unfortunate, did not cause a political crisis.

86John Tyler had already established the rule that if a president dies in office, the vice president becomes president.

87But Taylor's death did likely change the direction of history.

88His replacement, Millard Fillmore, did not try to hold the union together by force.

89Instead, he joined with politicians who wanted to compromise on the issue.

90The compromise legislation delayed, but did not really settle, the debate.

91In time, the division between North and South led to the American Civil War.

92And members of Taylor's own family became linked to the states that withdrew from the union.

93One of his daughters had married Jefferson Davis, who became the president of the Confederacy.

94I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.

95I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.