18501776 Club
Taylor is dead; Fillmore takes the oath before morning
The president, 65, collapsed days after the July 4 ceremony at the unfinished Washington Monument; the Union's slavery crisis now falls to his vice president.
In the summer of 1850, the sectional crisis over slavery in the Mexican Cession had stalled Congress and pushed Southern leaders toward talk of secession. President Zachary Taylor, a Louisiana slaveholder who nonetheless opposed slavery's expansion into the new territories, fell violently ill days after a July 4 celebration at the unfinished Washington Monument. He died on July 9, 1850, at age 65. Vice President Millard Fillmore was sworn in the following morning, becoming the last Whig ever to hold the presidency…
