Transition As president-elect, Taylor kept his distance from Washington, not resigning his Western Division command until late January 1849. He spent the months following the election formulating his cabinet selections. He was deliberate and quiet about his decisions, to the frustration of his fellow Whigs. While he despised
patronage and political games, he endured a flurry of advances from office-seekers looking to play a role in his administration. While he would appoint no Democrats, Taylor wanted his cabinet to reflect the nation's diverse interests, and so apportioned the seats geographically. He also avoided choosing prominent Whigs, sidestepping such obvious selections as Clay. He saw Crittenden as a cornerstone of his administration, offering him the crucial seat of
Secretary of State, but Crittenden insisted on serving out the governorship of Kentucky to which he had just been elected. Taylor settled on Senator
John M. Clayton of Delaware, a close associate of Crittenden's. With Clayton's aid, Taylor chose the six remaining members of his cabinet. One of the incoming Congress's first actions would be to establish the
Department of the Interior, so Taylor would be appointing that department's inaugural secretary.
Thomas Ewing, who had previously served as a senator from Ohio and as
Secretary of the Treasury under William Henry Harrison, accepted the patronage-rich position of
Secretary of the Interior. For the position of
Postmaster General, also a center of patronage, Taylor chose Congressman
Jacob Collamer of Vermont. After
Horace Binney refused appointment as Secretary of the Treasury, Taylor chose another prominent Philadelphian,
William M. Meredith.
George W. Crawford, a former governor of Georgia, accepted the position of
Secretary of War, while Congressman
William B. Preston of Virginia became
Secretary of the Navy. Senator
Reverdy Johnson of Maryland accepted appointment as
Attorney General, and became one of the most influential members of Taylor's cabinet. Fillmore was not in favor with Taylor, and was largely sidelined throughout Taylor's presidency. Taylor began his trek to Washington in late January, a journey rife with bad weather, delays, injuries, sickness and an attempted abduction by a family friend at
Ashland in Mississippi. Taylor finally arrived in the nation's capital on February 24 and soon met with the outgoing President Polk. Polk held a low opinion of Taylor, privately deeming him "without political information" and "wholly unqualified for the station" of president. Taylor spent the next week meeting with political elites, some of whom were unimpressed with his appearance and demeanor. With less than two weeks until his inauguration, he met with Clayton and hastily finalized his cabinet.
Inauguration Taylor's term as president began on Sunday, March 4, but his inauguration was not held until the next day out of religious concerns. His inauguration speech discussed the many tasks facing the nation, but presented a governing style of deference to Congress and sectional compromise instead of assertive executive action. His speech also emphasized the importance of following President Washington's
precedent in avoiding entangling alliances. During the period after his inauguration, Taylor made time to meet with numerous office-seekers and other ordinary citizens who desired his attention. He also attended an unusual number of funerals, including services for Polk and
Dolley Madison. According to Eisenhower, Taylor coined the phrase "
First Lady" in his eulogy for Madison. In the summer of 1849, Taylor toured the
Northeastern United States to familiarize himself with a region of which he had seen little. He spent much of the trip plagued by gastrointestinal illness and returned to Washington by September.
Sectional crisis of Taylor by
Mathew Brady, 1849 As Taylor took office, Congress faced a battery of questions related to the
Mexican Cession, acquired by the U.S. after the Mexican War and divided into military districts. It was unclear which districts would be established into states and which would become federal territories, while the question of their slave status threatened to bitterly divide Congress. Southerners objected to the admission of the
California Territory, the
New Mexico Territory, and the
Utah Territory to the Union as
free states despite California's demographic and economic growth. Additionally, Southerners had grown increasingly angry about the aid that Northerners had given to
fugitive slaves after
Prigg v. Pennsylvania allowed
slave catchers to capture alleged
runaway slaves in free states, and that Northern authorities frequently refused to enforce the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. At the same time, northerners demanded the abolition of the
domestic slave trade in Washington, D.C. Finally, Texas claimed parts of eastern New Mexico and threatened to send its
state militia to militarily enforce its territorial claims. While a Southern slaveowner himself, Taylor believed that slavery was economically infeasible in the Mexican Cession, and so opposed slavery in those territories as a needless source of controversy. His major goal was sectional peace, preserving the Union through legislative compromise. As the threat of Southern secession grew, he sided increasingly with antislavery Northerners such as Senator
William H. Seward of New York, even suggesting that he would sign the
Wilmot Proviso to ban slavery in federal territories should such a bill reach his desk. In Taylor's view, the best way forward was to admit California as a state rather than a federal territory, as it would leave the slavery question out of Congress's hands. The timing for statehood was in Taylor's favor, as the
California Gold Rush was well underway at the time of his inauguration, and California's population was exploding. The administration dispatched Representative
Thomas Butler King to California, to test the waters and advocate statehood, knowing that Californians were certain to adopt an anti-slavery constitution. King found that a
constitutional convention was already underway, and by October 1849, the convention unanimously agreed to join the Union—and to ban slavery within their borders. The question of the New Mexico–Texas border was unsettled at the time of Taylor's inauguration. The territory newly won from Mexico was under federal jurisdiction, but the Texans claimed a swath of land north of
Santa Fe and were determined to include it within their borders, despite having no significant presence there. Taylor sided with the New Mexicans' claim, initially pushing to keep it as a federal territory, but eventually supported statehood so as to further reduce the slavery debate in Congress. The Texas government, under newly instated governor
P. Hansborough Bell, tried to ramp up military action in defense of the territory against the federal government, but was unsuccessful. The
Latter Day Saint (Mormon) settlers of modern-day Utah had established a provisional
State of Deseret, an enormous swath of territory that had little hope of recognition by Congress. The Taylor administration considered combining the California and Utah territories but instead opted to organize the
Utah Territory. To alleviate the Mormon concerns over religious freedom, Taylor promised they would have relative independence from Congress despite being a federal territory. Taylor sent his only
State of the Union report to Congress in December 1849. He recapped international events and suggested several adjustments to tariff policy and executive organization, but the sectional crisis facing Congress overshadowed such issues. He reported on California's and New Mexico's applications for statehood, and recommended that Congress approve them as written and "should abstain from the introduction of those exciting topics of a sectional character". The policy report was prosaic and unemotional, but ended with a sharp condemnation of secessionists. It had no effect on Southern legislators, who saw the admission of two free states as an existential threat, and Congress remained stalled.
Foreign affairs , Attorney General;
William M. Meredith, Secretary of the Treasury;
William B. Preston, Secretary of the Navy;
George W. Crawford, Secretary of War;
Jacob Collamer, Postmaster General;
Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Interior; and
John M. Clayton, Secretary of State.
Lithograph by Francis D'Avignon, published by
Mathew Brady, 1849. Taylor and his Secretary of State,
John M. Clayton, both lacked diplomatic experience and came into office at a relatively uneventful time in American–international politics. Their shared nationalism allowed Taylor to devolve foreign policy matters to Clayton with minimal oversight, although no decisive foreign policy was established under their administration. As opponents of the autocratic European order, they vocally supported
German and
Hungarian liberals in the
revolutions of 1848, although they offered nothing in the way of aid. A perceived insult from the French minister
Guillaume Tell Poussin nearly led to a break in diplomatic relations until Poussin was replaced, and a
reparation dispute with Portugal resulted in harsh words from the Taylor administration. In a more positive effort, the administration arranged for two ships to assist in the United Kingdom's search for a team of British explorers, led by
John Franklin, who had gotten lost in the Arctic. While previous Whig administrations had emphasized Pacific trade as an economic imperative, the Taylor administration took no major initiative in the Far East. Throughout 1849 and 1850, they contended with
Narciso López, the
Venezuelan radical who led repeated
filibustering expeditions in an attempt to conquer the Spanish
Captaincy General of Cuba. The annexation of Cuba was the object of fascination among many in the South, who saw in Cuba a potential new slave state, and López had several prominent Southern supporters. López made generous offers to
United States Armed Forces leaders to support him, but Taylor and Clayton saw the enterprise as illegal. They issued a blockade, and later, authorized a mass arrest of López and his fellows, although the group would eventually be acquitted. They also confronted Spain, which had arrested several Americans on the charge of piracy, but the Spaniards eventually surrendered them to maintain good relations with the U.S. Arguably the Taylor administration's definitive accomplishment in foreign policy was the
Clayton–Bulwer Treaty of 1850, regarding a proposed inter-oceanic canal through
Central America. While the U.S. and Britain were on friendly terms, and the construction of such a canal was decades away from reality, the mere possibility put the two nations in an uneasy position. For several years, Britain had been seizing strategic points, particularly the
Mosquito Coast on the eastern coast of present-day
Nicaragua. Negotiations were held with Britain that resulted in the landmark Clayton–Bulwer Treaty. Both nations agreed not to claim control of any canal that might be built in Nicaragua. The treaty promoted the development of an Anglo-American alliance; its completion was Taylor's last action as president.
Compromise attempts and final days , Clay took a central role as Congress debated slavery. While his positions overlapped somewhat with Taylor's, the president always maintained his distance from Clay. Historians disagree on his motivations for doing so. This caused Taylor to become politically isolated as Southerners disapproved of his preference to appoint the territories of the Mexican Cession as free states while Northerners disapproved of his opposition to Clay's legislative agenda. As a result, Congress increasingly ignored Taylor while drafting a compromise. With assistance from Daniel Webster, Clay developed his landmark proposal, the
Compromise of 1850. The proposal allowed statehood for California, giving it independence on the slavery question, while the other territories would remain under federal jurisdiction. This included the disputed parts of New Mexico, although Texas would be reimbursed for the territory. Slavery would be retained in the District of Columbia, but the slave trade would be banned. Meanwhile, a strict
Fugitive Slave Law would be enacted, bypassing northern legislation which had restricted Southerners from retrieving runaway slaves. Tensions flared as Congress negotiated and secession talks grew, culminating with a threat from Taylor to send troops into New Mexico to protect its border from Texas, with himself leading the army. The crisis escalated after delegates in New Mexico proposed a new state constitution that would have banned slavery and
Peter Hansborough Bell won the
1849 Texas gubernatorial election on a pledge to order a militia invasion of New Mexico. Southern senators accused Taylor of secretly sending the U.S. Army to New Mexico; Taylor denied the allegations but emphasized that he would like to. He also said that anyone "taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang ... with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico." The omnibus law was a major step forward on these issues but ultimately could not pass, due to
radicals on both sides and Taylor's opposition. At this point, Taylor began to receive disapproval from even his own political allies. Secretary of War Crawford warned Taylor he would not approve a military deployment to New Mexico, although Taylor said he would give the order himself. Taylor's close advisors
Robert Toombs and
Alexander Stephens, both
Southern Whigs who later served as officials in the Confederate government, warned him that his rhetoric on New Mexico would drive Southerners out of the party.
Judicial appointments ==Death==