Zachary Taylor

Zachary Taylor spent 40 years fighting on America's frontiers before he ever sought office, and won the presidency in 1848 without having voted in a single election. "Old Rough and Ready" was a genuine military hero — his victory at Buena Vista in 1847 with a badly outnumbered force made him a national figure — and voters rewarded his plain-spoken toughness over his total absence of political experience. He was the last president to hold enslaved people while serving, and the last Whig to win the presidency.

Taylor's 16 months in office were dominated by the slavery crisis over territories acquired from Mexico. He took positions that confounded his Southern supporters: he wanted California and New Mexico admitted as states immediately, bypassing the tortured territorial debate the Compromise of 1850 was designed to navigate. When Southern leaders threatened secession, Taylor reportedly told them he would personally lead the army to suppress it and hang secessionists as traitors. It was a confrontation that history never got the chance to resolve.

Taylor died on July 9, 1850 — after developing acute gastroenteritis, likely from contaminated milk and cherries consumed at a Fourth of July ceremony. Conspiracy theories about arsenic poisoning have circulated since; a 1991 exhumation found no conclusive evidence of foul play. What his death conclusively accomplished was transferring the presidency to Millard Fillmore and the management of the sectional crisis to a man far more willing to accommodate slaveholder demands — with consequences the country spent the next decade living with.