Zachary Taylor

Twelfth president, 1849–50

Zachary Taylor was swept into the White House on a wave of popularity resulting from his victories in the Mexican-American War, and he began his presidency with the promise of bringing harmony to the Union. The ongoing debate over slavery, however, brought the nation closer to a sectional divide, particularly when decisions had to be made about whether or not to allow slavery in states that were forming in newly acquired territory. The Compromise of 1850, signed after Taylor’s presidency, was inaugurated during a period when slavery was a major political issue at all levels of American politics. A southerner by birth, Taylor was in favor of keeping slavery out of the new Southwest territories, namely California and New Mexico. Under his administration, Congress negotiated to resolve the manifold political issues caused by slavery. The other issue that occupied his sixteen-month tenure was regarding whether the U.S. should allow the territory acquired from the Mexican-American War to enter the country as a slaveholder issue. Taylor’s best efforts were ended by his sudden death, less than two years into his presidency, and a heavily modified Compromise of 1850.

Taylor presented a sedate and uncharacteristically groomed figure in this election-year portrait by James Reid Lambdin. “Old Rough and Ready,” as Taylor’s soldiers knew him, usually dressed “entirely for comfort,” wrote Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant—his uniform an inadvertent mating of military and civilian clothes.