A couple years back, I wrote a story about William Henry Harrison, the shortest serving president in US history. I visited his mausoleum and a monument to the man outside of Cincinnati, and had a grand time learning and writing about this basically forgotten president outside of trivia contests. (Read the story here.) And then, just this past year, I found myself in Cleveland at the monument and mausoleum of America’s second shortest serving president, James Garfield. Another story ensued, which you can read here. So I told myself that perhaps I was onto something, and did a bit of a dive into the presidents with the shortest terms, promising to try to write them in order.

Well, third on that not-so-great list is Zachary Taylor, and when I found out that his mausoleum and monument are in Louisville, and I just so happened to be headed there, a short side trip to honor America’s 12th president, and the second to die in office, seemed appropriate. So whether you are a fan of American history, off-the-beaten-path sites to see as a tourist, or totally obscure trivia, this is a story for you.

Zachary Taylor was born in Virginia in 1784, although his family would move to Louisville when he was a child. (Fun fact number one: this makes Taylor the last president born before the Constitution was ratified. John Tyler, the 10th president, was the first born after, in 1790.) His family were reasonably large land owners in Kentucky, with more than 10,000 acres. They also owned slaves, and Taylor himself would continue to throughout his life, but we will get more into that shortly.

Taylor was commissioned as an officer in the army in 1808, just in time to win acclaim during the War of 1812. He then fought in the Black Hawk War of 1828 as a colonel, and the subsequent Seminole War. But it was his efforts in the Mexican-American War that built his career.

By the start of hostilities in the 1840s, Zachary Taylor was a general, and he was sent by President Polk to Louisiana to guard against possible Mexican incursions. When negotiations with Mexico broke down (probably intentionally on the part of the US as an excuse for military intervention), Taylor’s command was one wing of the invasion into Mexico itself. He defeated Mexican forces at the Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, both times despite being outnumbered.

Now a major general, Taylor would go on to capture Monterrey in 1846, and then defeat Santa Anna himself at the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847. And while he would relinquish ultimate command of the forces that took Mexico City to Winfield Scott, his acclaim was such that backers were lining up to encourage him to run for president in 1848.

Politically, Zachary Taylor was staunchly independent, unlike Scott, who was a devout Whig. He was a slave owner who did not think it was practical (morality was another issue entirely) to expand slavery into new western states. He believed in the presidency in its pure Constitutional terms as the executor of laws, and thought that veto power should only be used in the case of illegality on the part of Congress. And despite being a proud southerner, he was a believer in a strong central government, and completely against the growing call for southern secession.

Initially, Taylor would not agree to either major party’s nomination. But he was swayed to the Whig side by those who believed his war hero status would play well at the polls, like the last Whig president, the aforementioned William Henry Harrison. And they were right. In a three-candidate race with former President Martin Van Buren running as an independent, Taylor would win the electoral college handily. (Fun fact number two: while four Whigs would become president, only two were elected, William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor. Both would die in office of illness, leaving their Vice Presidents, John Tyler and Millard Fillmore, respectively, as the other two Whig presidents.)

Zachary Taylor’s time in office is basically known for two things, his death (macabre to be best known for one’s death) and a piece of legislation that wasn’t even signed until after his death, called the Compromise of 1850. And even though most of what went into the “great compromise” was negotiated while Taylor was alive and in office, he was fairly ardently against it, so the only way it would have passed into law is if he lived up to his anti-veto position, something we will never know.

The Compromise of 1850 temporarily put off the Civil War, addressing slavery both directly and indirectly. In the direct sense, California was admitted to the union as a free state, and the slave trade was prohibited in Washington, DC, although slavery wasn’t itself outlawed in the capital. It also strengthened the responsibilities of northern states to arrest and return fugitive slaves to the south. Indirectly, it put off decisions on other future western states, allowing the formation of New Mexico and Utah Territories and allowing new states to be formed from them to vote on whether or not to accept slavery. It was negotiated by Whig leader Henry Clay, with Congress largely ignoring President Taylor throughout the process. And while we don’t know what Taylor would have done with the completed legislation, Millard Fillmore signed it. (Fun fact number three: while two later presidents also owned slaves. Zachary Taylor was the last one to do so while in office. Despite this, he was apparently against the compromise due to its allowing the possibility of slavery reaching the west, so take that with a grain of salt.)

But yeah, Zachary Taylor is best known for dying. On July 4, 1850, the president celebrated independence by eating – apparently – a large volume of cherries and cream. He developed a stomach bug after that, as did several others at the event. Five days later, he died, a brief illness ending a brief term of a brief political career. He was quoted on his death bed as stating, “I have endeavored to do my duty. I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me.”

President Zachary Taylor’s body was transported back to Louisville to be interred on his family estate. That land is now Zachary Taylor National Cemetery, containing both the family plot and veterans of wars from the Spanish-American War through the Persian Gulf War.

In 1883, the Commonwealth of Kentucky added a fifty foot tall monument next to the mausoleum with a life-sized statue of Zachary Taylor on top.

In 1926, the president’s body was moved to a simple stone mausoleum, along with his wife, who passed away in 1852.

So there we have it. America’s third shortest serving president, Zachary Taylor, as seen from his mausoleum and monument in Louisville, Kentucky. Now I guess I need to head to Marion, Ohio. I have a date with the fourth on the list, Warren Harding.

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