We have been taught that four Presidents of the United States have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, and John F. Kennedy in 1963.
What if our teachers were wrong? What if there was a fifth? Or, more accurately, a first, with the others moved down?
June 17, 1991: The remains of Zachary Taylor, the 12th President of the United States, are taken from his tomb, at the National Cemetery that bears his name, in Louisville, Kentucky. The purpose is to determine if he was assassinated.
Taylor was born on November 24, 1784, in Barboursville, Virginia, and grew up in Louisville. He became a hero in the War of 1812, and commanded troops as a Colonel in the Black Hawk War in 1832 and the Second Seminole War of 1835 to 1842. During the Second Seminole War, his troops gave him the nickname that would follow him for the rest of his life: "Old Rough and Ready."
Along with his contemporary, Winfield Scott, known as "Old Fuss and Feathers," he became one of the two big heroes of the Mexican-American War, winning the Battles of Monterrey in 1846 and Buena Vista in 1847.
In 1848, the Whig Party nominated him for President, with former Representative Millard Fillmore of New York for Vice President. Taylor defeated the Democratic nominee, Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, and took office despite having no interest in politics. Indeed, he admitted that he had never voted in his life, not even for himself.
Despite being a Southerner and a slaveholder -- he was the last President to hold slaves while in office -- Taylor did not push for the expansion of slavery, and sought sectional harmony above all other concerns. To avoid the issue of slavery, he urged settlers in New Mexico and California to bypass the territorial stage, and draft Constitutions for Statehood, setting the stage for the bill that became known as the Compromise of 1850.
On July 4, 1850, Taylor reportedly consumed copious amounts of cherries and iced milk while attending holiday celebrations during a fundraising event at the incomplete Washington Monument. Over the course of several days, he became ill with an unknown digestive ailment, initially resembling acute gastroenteritis.
The illness initially seemed mild, and on the first day, Taylor felt well enough to continue working. His condition worsened thereafter. His Army physician, Alexander S. Wotherspoon, "diagnosed the illness as cholera morbus, a flexible mid-19th-century term for intestinal ailments as diverse as diarrhea and dysentery, but not related to Asiatic cholera," which was a widespread epidemic prevalent in Washington, D.C. at the time. The identity and source of Taylor's illness has become the subject of historical speculation, although it is known that several of his Cabinet members had come down with a similar illness. But none of them died from it.
Taylor died at 10:35 PM on July 9, 1850. He was 65 years old. The next morning, Vice President Fillmore was sworn in as the 13th President, in the original Senate chamber of the U.S. Capitol, by William Cranch, the Chief Judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Columbia. Cranch had also sworn in John Tyler after the death of William Henry Harrison in 1841.
A few weeks after Taylor's death, Fillmore received a letter alleging that Taylor had been poisoned by a Jesuit lay official. In 1881, John Bingham, the Judge Advocate General at the trial of the surviving conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, wrote an editorial in The New York Times, alleging that Taylor had been poisoned by a pro-slavery Senator from Mississippi, who was at the celebration and would have had access to Taylor's intake.
Bingham's suspect was Jefferson Davis, later to be the President of the Confederate States of America -- and still alive at the time of Bingham's letter. In 1978, historian Hamilton Smith based his assassination theory on the timing of drugs, the lack of confirmed cholera outbreaks, and other material.
But this suggestion was ridiculous, since Davis had served under Taylor in the Black Hawk War of 1832, and Taylor was very impressed with him -- impressed enough that Taylor let Davis marry his daughter, Sarah. The marriage, in 1835, lasted only 3 months, as Sarah died of yellow fever. But Taylor maintained his respect for Davis, especially after both performed heroic deeds in the Mexican-American War. Davis later married Varina Howell, and it lasted until death did they part: Jeff died in 1889, Varina in 1906.
Clara Rising, a former professor at the University of Florida, persuaded Taylor's closest living relative to agree to an exhumation, so that his remains could be tested. The remains were exhumed and transported to the Office of the Kentucky Chief Medical Examiner on June 17, 1991, 141 years after Taylor's death. Samples of hair, fingernail, and other tissues were removed, and radiological studies were conducted. The remains were returned to the cemetery and reinterred, with appropriate honors, in the mausoleum.
The samples were analyzed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. While they found levels of arsenic that were higher than are normally present in the human body, the levels were not nearly high enough to suggest poisoning, intentional or otherwise. The analysis backed up the original 1850 diagnosis: Acute gastroenteritis, probably from contaminated food in what was then, probably, America's least hygienic major city.
They also determined that, as with James Garfield 31 years later, Taylor's doctors did him no favors: They found evidence of high levels of ipecac, calomel, opium and quinine, and cited the common treatments of being bled and blistered, which probably also killed George Washington in 1799, when he didn't have to die at the time, either. Taylor's death also came almost a century before the widespread use of antibiotics, which could have saved him.
If Taylor was assassinated over the slavery issue, it didn't work: When Congress passed the Compromise of 1850, Fillmore signed it, just as Taylor said he would have. In his final book, At the Edge of the Precipice, historian Robert V. Remini argued that the Compromise put off catastrophe for 10 years, and made the rise of Abraham Lincoln possible. (Remini won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson.)
Fillmore served out Taylor's term, and did not run for one of his own in 1852. He ended up serving less time in office than all Presidents except William Henry Harrison, James Garfield... and Zachary Taylor. He was convinced to run as a 3rd-party candidate in 1856, but finished a distant 3rd. He died in 1874.
Under the law then in place, the next person in line after the Vice President was the President Pro Tempore of the U.S. Senate. In recent times, that office has usually been given to the longest-serving member of the majority party. But that has not always been the case. David Rice Atchison of Missouri held the post from August 8, 1846 until May 6, 1850; and again from December 20, 1852 until December 4, 1854.
Since Inauguration Day, March 4, 1849, fell on a Sunday, Taylor refused to take the Oath of Office that day, and neither did Fillmore take his Oath of Office as Vice President. Both did so in a public ceremony the next day, Monday, March 5. But since neither man qualified for the Presidency, that meant that Atchison was President for one day. Or so many people have believed.
Atchison was not the President of the United States from 12:00 Noon on March 4, 1849 to Noon on March 5, 1849. Interviewed about the question in 1872, he said he did not take the Oath of Office, any more than Taylor or Fillmore did; and he did not consider himself, at the time, to be the President, or even the Acting President, and admitted that he spent most of those 24 hours in bed.
David Rice Atchison
Atchison died in 1886, the same year as President Chester Arthur, and another man who might have been President, Samuel J. Tilden.
The true settler of the question surrounding Atchison is that Congress' terms also ended at Noon on March 4, meaning that there was no President Pro Tempore of the U.S. Senate until the next day. Indeed, Atchison had just been re-elected to his seat, so he wasn't even a Senator for several hours, just a Senator-elect. So even if Atchison had legally been the President, it would have been for a few minutes, maybe an hour and change at most.
So who was the President of the United States for those 24 hours? Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States includes these words:
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—”I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
In other words, an incoming President must take the Oath of Office before any official acts. But the prevailing view is that Presidential succession does not depend on the Oath. In other words, Taylor was the President starting at Noon on the 4th, but he couldn't do anything about it. In 1933, the 20th Amendment to the Constitution cleared things up a bit: The terms for Members of Congress begin and end on January 3, and for the President and Vice President on January 20. (March 4 was the date on which Congress first convened, in 1789.)
There are Counties named for Taylor in Kentucky, Georgia and Iowa. The Virginia part of U.S. Route 522 is the Zachary Taylor Highway, and Louisiana Route 10 is the Zachary Taylor Parkway. The SS Zachary Taylor was a "Liberty ship" in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1949. Taylor was played by Allan Cavan in Rebellion in 1936, and Robert Barrat in Distant Drums in 1951.
Taylor Statue, Louisville, Kentucky
Fillmore has a statue in front of City Hall in his adopted hometown of Buffalo, New York, as does a later Buffalo resident who became President, Grover Cleveland. Other than that, Fillmore, who was never elected, and was a member of a now-defunct party, the Whig Party, and the last President who was neither a Democrat nor a Republican, has become the byword for a "forgotten President." He hasn't even been portrayed in a single TV show or movie. Nor is there known to be a single school in America named for him. However, the 1986-91 ABC sitcom Head of the Class was set at a fictional Millard Fillmore High School in Brooklyn.
Fillmore Statue, Buffalo City Hall
There was an SS President Fillmore that served the U.S. Navy as a transport ship from 1922 to 1928, a cruise ship that carried the name from 1929 to 1940, and a hospital ship with the name from 1940 to 1943.
The last surviving member of Taylor's Cabinet was Reverdy Johnson, his Attorney General, who lived until 1876. The last surviving member of Fillmore's Cabinet was Alexander H.H. Stuart, who served as Secretary of the Interior, and lived until 1891.
Although Taylor was born in Virginia, he represented Kentucky in politics, and remains the only President to have done so. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, but represented Illinois.
Taylor also lived for some time in Louisiana, making him the only President to have done so. The highest-ranking politician to represent Louisiana has been Edward Livingston, Secretary of State under Andrew Jackson from 1831 to 1833.
NOTE: My cutoff date for this project is 1869, the year of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, the 1st openly professional baseball team, and the 1st American football game. I had managed to work in references to most pre-1869 Presidents. Taylor's exhumation was the only way I could think of to do it for Taylor, or for Fillmore.
*
June 17, 1991 was a Monday. These Major League Baseball games were played:
* The New York Mets beat the Cincinnati Reds, 10-6 at Shea Stadium. Howard Johnson and Hubie Brooks (newly reacquired, after being part of the Gary Carter trade 6 year earlier) hit home runs in support of Ron Darling.
* The Montreal Expos beat the Houston Astros, 3-2 at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. The Expos tied the game in the bottom of the 9th inning, and each team scored in the 11th. Tim Wallach singled Marquis Grissom home in the bottom of the 16th.
* The California Angels beat the Boston Red Sox, 4-2 at Fenway Park in Boston.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Atlanta Braves, 4-3 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Minnesota Twins, 6-5 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Cal Ripken Jr. hit a home run.
* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Oakland Athletics, 5-0 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Don August pitched a 5-hit shutout. Robin Yount went 1-for-2 with 2 walks. Paul Molitor went 1-for-4 with an RBI. Rickey Henderson went 2-for-2 with a stolen base.
* The Texas Rangers beat the Kansas City Royals, 10-9 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. The Rangers trailed 9-4, but scored 3 runs in the 8th, 2 in the 9th, and 1 in the 10th, with Gary Pettis singling Steve Buchele home with the winning run. George Brett went 0-for-5.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the San Diego Padres, 3-2 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. Barry Bonds went 1-for-3 with a walk, and Tony Gwynn 2-for-4.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-4 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
* And the St. Louis Cardinals beat the San Francisco Giants, 5-4 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
* And the New York Yankees, the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Indians, the Detroit Tigers, the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays were not scheduled.
