President Zachary Taylor dies unexpectedly | July 9, 1850 | HISTORY (2024)

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President Zachary Taylor dies unexpectedly | July 9, 1850 | HISTORY? ›

Zachary Taylor

Zachary Taylor dies of “cholera morbus,” making him the second President to die in office and vaulting Vice President Millard Fillmore into the White House. On July 9, 1850, President Zachary Taylor died after a brief illness. He had attended a ceremony at the unfinished Washington Monument on July 4.

Taylor opposed the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California into the Union as a free state and banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C., in exchange for allowing most of the remaining territory captured from Mexico to decide the issue of slavery locally and passing a federal fugitive slave law requiring state ...

Officially, he died from cholera morbus, and today, the prevalent theory is that Taylor suffered from gastroenteritis, an illness exacerbated by poor sanitary conditions in Washington.

After participating in ceremonies at the Washington Monument on a blistering July 4, Taylor fell ill; within five days he was dead. After his death, the forces of compromise triumphed, but the war Taylor had been willing to face came 11 years later.

He went on to win the election of 1848 and assumed the presidency as the country was heading toward another crisis over the issue of slavery. A slave owner himself, President Taylor adopted some antislavery political positions. He opposed the spread of slavery to new U.S. territories.

The Compromise of 1850 failed to settle the tensions that continued to divide the nation during the next decade and did not establish a principle that could be applied unequivocally to territories outside the Mexican Cession. Extremists in both sections were displeased with the Compromise.

Taylor died on the evening of July 9, after four days of suffering from symptoms that included severe cramping, diarrhea, nausea and dehydration. His personal physicians concluded that he had succumbed to cholera morbus, a bacterial infection of the small intestine.

Millard Fillmore, a member of the Whig party, was the 13th President of the United States (1850-1853) and the last President not to be affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties.

The presidency of Millard Fillmore began on July 9, 1850, when Millard Fillmore became President of the United States upon the death of Zachary Taylor, and ended on March 4, 1853.

Who was President during the Compromise of 1850? ›

Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853, the last president to have been a member of the Whig Party while in office.

The one notable foreign policy achievement during Taylor's short presidency was the signing of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. This document established that any Central American canal linking the Atlantic to the Pacific would be open to both British and American ships and would not be fortified.