The Exhuming of Zachary Taylor

Zachary Taylor rose to prominence as a General in the Mexican War. Although President James K. Polk tried to hamper Taylor's success for fear that Taylor would acquire political popularity, that's just what happened and in 1848 Taylor was elected President. He died in office two years later, on July 9, 1850, after eating cherries and milk and an Independence Day Celebration. The cause of death was never fully established.

In the late 1980s, historian Clara Rising theorized that Taylor was murdered by poison. She made such a convincing case that she was able to convince Taylor's closest living relative and the Coroner of Jefferson County, Kentucky, to order an exhumation. On June 17, 1991, Taylor's remains were exhumed and transported to the Office of the Kentucky Chief Medical Examiner, where radiological studies were conducted and samples of hair, fingernail and other tissues were removed. The remains were then returned to the cemetery for a dignified reburial. Taylor's remains were reinterred in the same mausoleum he had been in since 1926.



Testing was conducted, known as "neutron activation analysis." The testing occurred at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and it revealed arsenic levels several hundred times lower than they would have been if Taylor had been poisoned. The coroner concluded that on a hot July day Taylor had attempted to cool himself with large amounts of cherries and iced milk.

According to Dr. Samuel Eliot Morrison, “In the unhealthy climate of Washington, with its open sewers and flies, Taylor came down with cholera morbus, or acute gastroenteritis as it is now called.” He might have recovered, Dr. Morrison theorized, but Taylor's doctors “drugged him with ipecac, calomel, opium and quinine (at 40 grains a whack), and bled and blistered him too. On July 9, he gave up the ghost.”

Despite these findings, assassination theories still survive. The theorists include author Michael Parenti, who wrote in his 1999 book History as Mystery in the chapter entitled "The Strange Death of Zachary Taylor," that Taylor was assassinated because of his moderate stance on the expansion of slavery. Parenti claims that the 1991 autopsy was botched.