Summary

Zachary Taylor, born November 24, 1784 in Barboursville, Virginia, and died July 9, 1850 in Washington, D.C., was an American military officer and statesman who was the 12th president of the United States.

His 40-year career in the army ended with a landslide victory for the United States in the Mexican-American War, and his status as a national hero enabled him to win the presidential election of 1848 despite his vague political platform. His main goal as president was to maintain the integrity of the Union, but he died sixteen months into his term without resolving the issue of slavery, which was exacerbating tensions in the federal Congress.

Taylor was born into an influential planter family who moved from Virginia to Kentucky as a child. He joined the Army in 1808 and distinguished himself in the Anglo-American War of 1812. He rose through the ranks founding forts along the Mississippi River and participated in the Black Hawk War in 1832. His victories in the Second Seminole War brought him national prominence and earned him the nickname "Old Rough and Ready".

In 1845, while the annexation of Texas was underway, President James K. Polk sent Taylor to the Río Grande region in anticipation of a possible confrontation with Mexico. War broke out in May 1846 and Taylor led American troops to victory in a series of battles that culminated in the Battles of Palo Alto and Monterrey. He became a national hero and his supporters urged him to run for president in 1848.

The Whig party managed to convince him to run on their ticket despite his unclear platform and lack of interest in politics. As president, Taylor kept his distance from Congress and his cabinet even as tensions threatened to divide the country. Debates over the slave status or otherwise of the vast territories ceded by Mexico prompted Southerners to threaten secession. Although he was a Southerner and a slave owner himself, Taylor did not seek to expand slavery. To avoid the issue, he urged settlers in New Mexico and California to bypass territorial status and write constitutions to achieve statehood; this policy led to the signing of the Compromise of 1850 shortly after his death. Suffering from poor health throughout his life, Taylor died suddenly of stomach disease in July 1850. He thus had little impact on the deep crisis that led to the Civil War a decade later.

Taylor was born on November 24, 1784, on a plantation in Orange County, Virginia, to a planter family of English descent. He was the third child of five boys and three girls. His mother was Sarah Dabney (Strother) Taylor and his father, Richard Taylor, fought in the American Revolutionary War with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Taylor was a descendant of William Brewster, one of the Mayflower passengers, signer of the Mayflower Compact and leader of the Plymouth colony; another of his ancestors was Isaac Allerton Jr. a merchant and military man who was the son of Isaac Allerton and Fear Brewster, two Mayflower passengers. One of his first cousins through this line was James Madison, the fourth president of the United States.

Abandoning exhausted land, Taylor's family migrated west and settled near what became Louisville, Kentucky, not far from the Ohio River. Taylor grew up in a small log cabin before his family moved into a brick house, a symbol of prosperity. Louisville's rapid growth was a boon to Taylor's father, who ended up owning about 40 square miles in the early 1800s; he owned 26 slaves to cultivate the most developed portion of his properties. There were no formal schools on the Kentucky "Frontier" and Taylor received only an intermittent education. One teacher recalled that Taylor was quick to understand, but his early letters show that he had difficulty with grammar and his handwriting was later described as "that of a near-literate."

In June 1810, Taylor married Margaret Mackall Smith whom he had met the previous fall in Louisville. "Peggy" Smith came from an influential Maryland planter family and was the daughter of Major Walter Smith who had fought in the Revolutionary War. Zachary and Peggy had six children:

Indian wars

On May 3, 1808, Taylor entered the army with the rank of first lieutenant in the 7th Infantry. He was one of the new officers appointed by Congress in response to the Chesapeake-Leopard affair, in which an American frigate was boarded by a British warship and the incident nearly led to war. Taylor spent most of 1809 in the ramshackle camps of New Orleans and Terre aux Bœufs, Louisiana. He was promoted to captain in November 1810. His military duties were then limited and he concentrated on his personal affairs. During the following years, he bought several slaves and numerous bank shares in Louisville. In July 1811 he was sent to the Indiana Territory where he was given command of Fort Knox after his predecessor had fled. After a few weeks, he managed to restore order to the garrison and was commended by Governor William Henry Harrison.

During the Anglo-American War of 1812 between the British Empire and its Native American allies and the United States, Taylor repelled an attack on Fort Harrison in Indiana Territory led by the Shawnee chief Tecumseh. As a reward for this success, Taylor was commissioned a major and became aide-de-camp to General Samuel Hopkins during two expeditions: the first to the Illinois Territory and the second to the Battle of Tippecanoe, which ended with the Indian retreat at Wild Cat Creek. Taylor then moved his family to Fort Knox to protect them from the fighting. In the spring of 1814, he was placed under the command of Brigadier General Benjamin Howard and oversaw the construction of Fort Johnson near present-day Warsaw, Illinois. Upon Howard's death a few weeks later, Taylor was ordered to abandon the fort and withdraw to St. Louis, Missouri. He was reduced to the rank of captain at the end of the war in 1814 and resigned from the army only to return a year later after his appointment as a major.

For two years, Taylor commanded Fort Howard near the Green Bay settlement in Wisconsin. He then returned to Louisville where his family was located. In April 1819, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and dined with President James Monroe. At the end of 1821, Taylor took the 7th Infantry Regiment to Natchitoches, Louisiana on the Red River. Under the orders of General Edmund Pendleton Gaines, the unit sought a new and more suitable location on the Sabine River. In March 1822, Taylor established Fort Jesup southwest of Natchitoches and in November was transferred to Fort Robertson in Baton Rouge where he remained until February 1824. He then spent two years on recruiting missions before being called to Washington, DC to serve on a military modernization committee. At the same time, he bought a plantation in Louisiana and settled his family in Baton Rouge.

In May 1828, Taylor was recalled to active duty and commanded Fort Snelling in Minnesota for a year and then the nearby camp of Fort Crawford for another year. After a period of furlough during which he expanded his property, Taylor was promoted to colonel of the 1st Infantry in April 1832. During Black Hawk's War, Taylor fought under the command of General Henry Atkinson against the Native American forces of the Sauk and Fox chief Black Hawk in the Michigan Territory. The end of the conflict in August 1832 marked the end of Native American resistance to American expansion in the region and the following years were relatively quiet. During this period, Taylor objected to the relationship between his 17-year-old daughter Sarah Knox and Lieutenant Jefferson Davis; he respected Davis but did not want his daughter to become a military wife because he knew it was a difficult life for families. Davis and Sarah Knox were married in June 1835 but she succumbed to an attack of malaria three months later while visiting Davis' sister in St. Francisville, Louisiana.

In 1837, Taylor was deployed to Florida as part of the Second Seminole War and defeated the Seminole forces on Christmas Day at the Battle of Lake Okeechobee; for this victory he was promoted to brigadier general. In May 1838, Brigadier General Thomas Jesup stepped down and placed Taylor in command of all U.S. forces in Florida, a position he held for two years. His reputation as an effective commander grew and he earned the nickname "Old Rough and Ready. After being granted a long leave, Taylor spent a year touring the country with his family and met many officers. During this time he became interested in politics and corresponded with President William Henry Harrison. He was appointed commander of the Second Department of the Western Division of the Army in May 1841, which covered a large area west of the Mississippi River and south of the 37th parallel north. Stationed in Arkansas, Taylor enjoyed several quiet years and devoted as much time to military matters as to his private affairs.

U.S.-Mexican War

In 1836, the Republic of Texas seceded from Mexico and declared its independence. In anticipation of the annexation of Texas by the United States, Taylor was sent in April 1844 to Fort Jesup, Louisiana to oppose possible Mexican attempts to regain control of the territory. He remained there until July 1845 and when annexation became imminent, President James K. Polk ordered him to deploy in the disputed territory "in the vicinity of the Río Grande. Taylor chose to settle in Corpus Christi to spend the winter.

Taylor's troops approached the Río Grande in March 1846 because negotiations with Mexico had failed and war seemed imminent. Fighting began on April 25 when an American patrol was attacked by a large Mexican force. Upon learning of the incident, Polk declared to Congress that war between the United States and Mexico had begun. In May, Taylor commanded U.S. troops in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, in which he repelled numerically superior Mexican forces. These victories made him a national hero, and a few weeks later he was brevetted a major general and received official congratulations from Congress. The press compared him to George Washington and Andrew Jackson, two generals who had attained the presidency; however, Taylor indicated that he had no intention of running for the office: "Such an idea never crossed my mind, and it is probable that it does not cross the mind of any sensible person.

In September, Taylor inflicted heavy losses on the Mexican defenders during the Battle of Monterrey. The city of Monterrey was considered "impregnable," but it fell in only three days and the Mexican forces retreated. He was criticized, however, for signing a truce rather than demanding a total surrender. Afterwards, half of Taylor's army joined General Winfield Scott's troops besieging Veracruz. Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna learned, through the interception of a letter from Scott, that Taylor had only 6,000 men left, many of them volunteers. Santa Anna took advantage of the opportunity and attacked with his 20,000 men. At the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847, the casualties were 700 on the American side and 1,500 on the Mexican side. The Mexican forces preferred to retreat and the Americans won one of their most important victories of the war. Taylor remained in Monterrey until the end of November 1847 before returning home. Although he spent the next year in command of the entire Western Division, his active career was over. In December, he received a hero's welcome in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and his popularity made him a possible candidate for the 1848 presidential election.

As a career military man, Taylor had never spoken out on political issues and had never voted before 1848. He considered himself an independent, believed that the country needed a strong and stable banking system, and felt that President Andrew Jackson should not have been allowed to let the Second Bank of the United States collapse in 1836. For him, discussions about expanding slavery to the western United States made no sense because neither the cotton nor the sugar produced in large quantities through slavery could be easily grown there through a plantation economy. He was also a staunch nationalist and because of his wartime experience, considered secession to be the wrong way to solve the country's problems. Taylor, although he did not agree with their position on protectionist tariffs, was close to the Whigs' ideas on political organization. Like them, he believed that the president should not have veto power over laws unless they violated the constitution, that he should not interfere with Congress, and that the cabinet should have strong power.

Long before his victory in Buena Vista, political groups had formed in support of a Taylor presidential bid. His supporters were a disparate collection of Whigs, Democrats, Northerners, Southerners, and allies and opponents of national leaders such as Henry Clay and James K. Polk. By the end of 1846, Taylor's opposition to a presidential campaign had begun to wane, and it was becoming clear that his ideas were moving closer and closer to those of the Whigs. He maintained, however, that he would only run as an independent and not as a party member. As the Whig convention approached, Taylor declared that he had always been close to Whig ideas but considered himself a Republican Democrat. Many Southerners believed that Taylor supported slavery and its adoption in the new territories taken from Mexico, and some were angered when he suggested that if he became president he would not oppose the Wilmot Proviso, which prohibited such expansion. This position, however, did not win him the support of anti-slavery activists in the north, who wanted Taylor to come out strongly in favour of the text, not to promise not to veto it. Most abolitionists were also opposed to him because he owned slaves. Most Southerners also knew that Taylor defended states' rights and was opposed to protectionist tariffs and federal spending on infrastructure.

The Whig convention chose Taylor as its presidential candidate and nominated Millard Fillmore, a New York state lawyer and the chairman of the United States House Committee on Ways and Means (he had been considered for the position in 1844). The choice of Fillmore was largely an attempt to appease Northern Whigs angered by the choice of a slave-owning Southerner, but none of the party's constituents were happy with the final ticket. Taylor continued to downplay his role in the campaign and preferred not to meet directly with voters or make his political views explicit. Her campaign was ably managed by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, a friend and early political supporter, and she received a strong endorsement from Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. Taylor won the election against Democratic candidate Lewis Cass and Freeholder candidate Martin Van Buren.

As historian Michael F. Holt wrote, Taylor ignored the Whig program:

"Taylor was indifferent to ideas that the Whigs had long considered vital. In public, he was skillfully ambiguous, refusing to answer questions about the banking system, tariffs and infrastructure building. In private, he was more direct. The idea of a national bank "is dead and will not return in my lifetime. In the future, tariffs "will be raised only for financial movements"; in other words, Whig hopes of restoring the protectionist tariffs of 1842 were in vain. There would never again be federal surpluses from land sales to distribute to the states, and infrastructure "will be done in spite of presidential vetoes. In a few words, Taylor made an epitaph of the entire Whig economic program."

Investiture

As president-elect, Taylor stayed away from Washington and did not resign his command of the Western Division until January 1849. He spent the months following his election forming his cabinet. He took his time in making his choices, much to the frustration of his fellow Whigs. Despite his disdain for patronage and political tactics, he received numerous requests for appointments to positions in his administration.

Although he was not going to appoint Democrats, Taylor wanted his cabinet to reflect the various tendencies of the nation, and he distributed the positions geographically. He saw Crittenden as the linchpin of his administration and offered him the position of secretary of state, but Crittenden preferred to remain governor of Kentucky, the office to which he had just been elected. Taylor then turned to John M. Clayton, a close associate of Crittenden.

Taylor began his journey to Washington, D.C., in late January and the trip was plagued by bad weather, delays, accidents and illness. He finally arrived in the capital on February 24 and met with outgoing President Polk. Polk held Taylor in low esteem and privately deemed him "perfectly unqualified for the office" of president. Taylor spent the next week with political elites, some of whom were unimpressed with his appearance and demeanor. Less than two weeks before his inauguration, he met with Clayton and hastily finalized his cabinet.

Taylor's term of office began on Sunday, March 4, but he refused to be sworn in on Lord's Day. In his inaugural address, Taylor spoke of the nation's many problems but called for a style of government based on compromise and respect for Congress rather than the pre-eminence of the executive branch. In the summer of 1849, he visited the northeastern United States to familiarize himself with the unfamiliar region. He suffered from stomach pains throughout the trip and returned to Washington in September.

Domestic Policy

When Taylor took office, Congress faced many questions about the Mexican cession, which included three important territories acquired by the United States after the war with Mexico: California, New Mexico and Utah. It was necessary to determine which of these acquisitions would gain statehood and which would remain a territory, while the question of the status of slavery bitterly divided Congress. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had established that future states west of the Mississippi would be slaveholding or abolitionist, depending on whether they were south or north of 36° 30'. The question was whether to impose slavery on California, which was south of that line, even though it was opposed to it. Although he was a Southern slave owner himself, Taylor was not particularly sympathetic to the faction that wanted to maintain slavery. His main objective was to keep the country together through legislative compromise. As the threat of Southern secession grew, he became increasingly sympathetic to Northern abolitionists such as Senator William Henry Seward of New York and even suggested that he would approve the Wilmot Proviso banning slavery in the territories taken from Mexico if such a bill reached his desk.

For Taylor, the best solution was to admit California as a state rather than a territory because the issue of slavery would be in the hands of local politicians and not in Congress. The timetable for statehood was favorable to Taylor because a gold rush was underway and California's population was exploding. The administration sent Representative Thomas Butler King to California to assess the situation and advocate for statehood because he knew that an abolitionist constitution would be adopted. King reported that a constitutional convention was already underway and in October 1849, it unanimously agreed to join the Union and ban slavery.

The border between New Mexico and Texas had not yet been established at the time of Taylor's inauguration. The territory newly taken from Mexico was under federal control, but the Texans claimed all the territory east of the Río Grande and were determined to keep it even though they had no significant presence there. Taylor sided with the New Mexicans, initially defending the retention of territorial status and then supporting statehood to further appease the slavery debate in Congress. The Texas government, led by Governor Peter Hansborough Bell, attempted to take military action against the federal government but failed.

The Mormon pioneers who had settled in what is now Utah had established the provisional state of Deseret, a huge territory not recognized by Congress. The Taylor administration considered combining the territories of California and Utah, but instead created the Utah Territory. To allay Mormon fears about religious freedom, Taylor promised that they would have relative independence from Congress even though it was a federal territory.

Taylor gave his first and only State of the Union address in December 1849. He summarized international events and suggested several tariff adjustments, but these issues were overshadowed by the secessionist crisis in Congress. He reported the demands of California and New Mexico and recommended that Congress approve their constitutions as written, avoiding divisive debates. The speech was prosaic and impassive but ended with a strong condemnation of the secessionists. It had no effect on Southern legislators who saw the admission of the two abolitionist states as an existential threat, and Congress remained deadlocked.

Foreign Policy

Taylor and his secretary of state, John M. Clayton, both lacked diplomatic experience and took office at a relatively peaceful time in American international relations. Their shared nationalism allowed Taylor to offload foreign affairs to Clayton, but no major decisions were made under his administration. As opponents of the European aristocratic order, they spoke out in favor of the German and Hungarian liberals during the revolutions of 1848, although they gave them only limited support. A perceived insult by the French minister Guillaume Tell Poussin nearly caused a rupture in diplomatic relations between the two countries, and a dispute over reparations with Portugal led to a virulent reaction by the Taylor administration. On a more positive note, the administration seconded two ships to support the British search for an expedition led by John Franklin that had disappeared in the Arctic. While previous Whig administrations had emphasized trade in the Pacific, Taylor took no major initiative in the Far East.

In 1849, the two men clashed with Narciso López, a Venezuelan radical exiled in the United States who carried out several expeditions to free Cuba from Spanish rule. While López made generous offers to U.S. military leaders to support him, Taylor and Clayton considered these attacks illegal. They set up a blockade and authorized the arrest of López and his supporters, although the group was eventually acquitted. They also opposed Spain, which had arrested several Americans for piracy, but the Spaniards released them to maintain good relations with the United States.

The only real diplomatic success of the Taylor administration was the Clayton-Bulwer treaty concerning the construction of a canal linking the Pacific to the Atlantic through Central America. Although relations between the United States and the United Kingdom were friendly and such a canal was still a long way off, the mere possibility of its construction worried both nations. For several years, the United Kingdom had seized strategic points such as the Mosquito Coast on the eastern coast of present-day Nicaragua. Negotiations resulted in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, in which both nations agreed to the neutrality of a canal built in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The agreement helped develop the Anglo-American alliance and its signing was Taylor's last presidential action.

Last days

The Whig majority leader in the Senate, Henry Clay, played a central role in the debates over the integration of the new territories into the Union. Although his positions were close to Clay's, Taylor always stayed away from Clay; historians disagree on the reasons for this avoidance. With the help of Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Clay developed the Compromise of 1850. The proposal allowed California to enter the Union as an abolitionist state while Texas dropped its claims to eastern New Mexico. Slavery was maintained in the District of Columbia, but the slave trade was prohibited. Conversely, the southerners obtained the abandonment of the Wilmot Proviso and the territories of Utah and New Mexico, which remained under federal control, could in principle decide to become slave states. A strict Fugitive Slave Act was also passed to circumvent Northern legislation that prevented Southerners from recovering their fugitive slaves in the North. Negotiations over the legislation were heated, and tensions came to a head when Taylor threatened to deploy federal troops in New Mexico to protect its border with Texas. Despite its popularity and importance, the compromise was repeatedly rejected by extremists on both sides.

No major reforms came to Taylor's desk during his presidency, and his last days were overshadowed by the Galphin case. Before joining the Taylor administration, Secretary of War George W. Crawford was a lawyer who had defended the case of George Galphin, a merchant and colonial diplomat who had been rewarded by the British Crown for his negotiations with the Native Americans. Due to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Galphin was not paid for his services, but the British debt was transferred to the American government. After years of legal battles, his heirs were finally reimbursed the original amount, but the Polk administration did not allow them to pay the interest, which was almost four times the original amount.

After his appointment to the cabinet, Crawford used his connections with Secretary of the Treasury William M. Meredith and Attorney General Reverdy Johnson to secure payment of the interest. This was done in April 1850, but the agreement was for Crawford to receive nearly $100,000 ($2,900,000 in 2011 dollars), half of what the Galphin heirs received. In effect, two cabinet members had allocated a huge amount of public money to a third. A House of Representatives committee of inquiry found that Crawford had committed no wrongdoing, but disapproved of his taking the money. Taylor, who was considering a reorganization of his Cabinet, now faced a political scandal.

Administration and Cabinet

On July 4, 1850, Taylor drank a lot of cold milk and ice water after attending a charity event at the Washington Monument being built on Independence Day. Over the next few days, his health deteriorated sharply due to an unknown digestive disease. His doctors "diagnosed cholera morbus, a 19th century term for digestive disorders ranging from diarrhea to dysentery but unrelated to cholera. The precise cause of Taylor's illness was the subject of much speculation, and several members of his cabinet showed similar symptoms. Despite treatment, the president died on July 9, 1850.

Taylor was buried in a public vault in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., and remained there from July 13 to October 25, 1850; the cemetery had been built in 1835 to house the remains of the nation's representatives while their graves were being prepared. His body was eventually buried in the family plot on the old Taylor Plantation in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1883, the Kentucky government built a 60-foot column near his grave with a life-size statue of the former president. In the 1920s, the Taylor family began the process of transforming the site into a national cemetery. The State of Kentucky donated two lots for the project and the cemetery grew from 2,000 to 65,000 square meters. On May 6, 1926, the remains of Taylor and his wife who died in 1852 were moved to a mausoleum built nearby and the cemetery became the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery.

For several decades, there were rumors that Taylor had been poisoned. In 1978, Hamilton Smith, M.D., based his theory of assassination on, among other things, the duration of the treatments and the absence of a cholera epidemic. In the late 1980s, Clara Rising, a former University of Florida professor, persuaded one of Taylor's descendants, who was also the Jefferson County Medical Examiner, to order an exhumation of his grandfather's body. The body was exhumed on June 17, 1991, and samples of hair, nails and other tissues were taken. Radiological tests were performed and the remains were returned to the mausoleum with full honors. A neutron activation analysis performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory revealed no evidence of poisoning because the arsenic levels were too low. The analysis concluded that he had contracted acute gastroenteritis related to contamination of his food or drink, probably related to the poor condition of Washington's sewers. Any recovery was however prevented by his doctors who treated him with "ipecac, calomel, opium and quinine in addition to bloodletting".

Because of his short tenure, Taylor had little influence on the presidency or the United States. Some historians consider Taylor to have been too new to politics at a time when leaders needed close ties to political leaders. Despite its limitations, the Clayton-Bulwer treaty affecting relations with the United Kingdom in Central America is "recognized as an important step in weakening the national policy of Manifest Destiny. The Compromise of 1850, initiated under his presidency, was signed by President Fillmore in September 1850.

Taylor was the last president to own slaves during his presidency. He was the third of four Whig presidents, the last of whom was Fillmore. He was the second president to die in office after William Henry Harrison nine years earlier. Taylor was also the only president along with Harrison (W. H.), Johnson (Andrew) and Carter not to appoint justices to the Supreme Court and the only one from Louisiana.

The United States Postal Service issued the first stamp honoring Zachary Taylor on June 21, 1875, and he was featured again on the 1938 presidential series. He was last featured on the 1986 presidential series. After Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln, Taylor was the fifth president to appear on American stamps. Taylor has several places named after him, including Camp Taylor in Kentucky, Fort Zachary Taylor in Florida, Taylor Counties in Georgia and Iowa, and the town of Rough and Ready in California. The liberty ship SS Zachary Taylor and the Zachary Taylor Hall at Southeast Louisiana University (en) were also named in his honor.

Sources

1. Zachary Taylor
2. Zachary Taylor
3. Le mandat présidentiel devait commencer le 4 mars 1849 mais ce jour était un dimanche et Taylor refusa de prêter serment avant le lendemain. Le vice-président Millard Fillmore ne fut pas non plus assermenté avant le lundi 5 mars. La plupart des spécialistes considèrent que selon la Constitution, le mandat de Taylor commença le 4 mars indépendamment du jour de sa prestation de serment.
4. Les estimations des pertes varient fortement[49]. L'Encyclopedia Britannica les évalue à 700 du côté américain et 1 500 du côté mexicain[49]. Pour les « tués ou blessés », Hamilton avance 673 Américains et « au moins 1 800 » Mexicains[50]. Bauer liste « 594 tués, 1 039 blessés et 1 854 disparus » du côté mexicain et « 272 tués, 387 blessés et 6 disparus » du côté américain[51].
5. ^ President Zachary Taylor and the Laboratory: Presidential Visit from the Grave, su ornl.gov, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. URL consultato il 2 novembre 2010 (archiviato dall'url originale il 28 luglio 2010).
6. El período de servicio de Taylor estaba programado para comenzar al mediodía EST del 4 de marzo de 1849, pero como ese día era domingo, Taylor se negó a prestar juramento hasta el día siguiente. El vicepresidente Millard Fillmore tampoco prestó juramento ese día. La mayoría de los estudiosos creen que, según la Constitución, el mandato de Taylor comenzó el 4 de marzo, independientemente de si había prestado juramento.
7. Literalmente: Viejo, rudo y dispuesto; también era conocido con el sobrenombre de Viejo Zack. TEMPRANO GARCÍA, Miguel: «Notas» a MELVILLE, Herman: Cuentos completos. Barcelona: Alba, 2006, p.35 y p.43.
8. 1 2 Zachary Taylor // Brockhaus Enzyklopädie (нем.) / Hrsg.: Bibliographisches Institut & F. A. Brockhaus, Wissen Media Verlag