“Zachary Taylor, 12th President of the United States. Died at 65 years of age. He was a Southerner, ho abhorred slavery and didn’t want to see it spread. He died in his second year in office. Without Fillmore and then Buchanan as Presidents following him, the Union might have survived.”
Interesting your comments on Taylor being a Southerner who did not want to see slavery being spread. I recall some years back, there was the theory that Taylor may have been deliberately poisoned and that he (and not Lincoln) may have been the first US President to be assassinated. And his views on slavery may have given some credence to that idea as there were likely those interests who would not have liked Taylor’s ideas on slavery.
But that theory of him being deliberately poisoned was put to rest when authorities exhumed his remains and found, with the assistance of modern coroner procedures and science, no evidence that Taylor was poisoned.
I've heard this "slavery spread" theory all my life and I used to believe it until I wondered what a modern cotton map looked like.
What I discovered is that slavery could not have spread. Neither Cotton nor Tobacco will grow in any of the territories slavery could have expanded to, at least not for another 60 years or so it would take to make modern irrigation pumps.
The simple truth is that in 1860, slavery could not spread. It was literally impossible.