Grant & Taylor

For most of their lives, Taylor and Grant seemed to be politically indifferent. Each voted just once (Taylor in 1846, and Grant 10 years later) before being elected themselves. But Taylor, the last Whig to be elected president, and Grant, who was the second Republican elected, had important things in common politically.

Their political link, through the Whig Party, was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, a Whig Member of Congress (1847-49), was a supporter of Taylor. Although Lincoln, as a young man, idolized Taylor’s eventual rival, Henry Clay, he vigorously supported Taylor for president in 1848. Lincoln, opposed to the expansion of slavery, gravitated to the Republican Party as the sectional strive intensified. Lincoln’s political heir was Grant.

In terms of slavery, President Taylor enraged pro-slavery Southerners by supporting the efforts of California and New Mexico to be admitted to the Union as free states. He was outraged by the resulting threats of secession from Southerners who ostensibly thought that the slaveholding president from Louisiana had double-crossed them. After a meeting with some of them, Taylor made his famous pledge to lead the army himself if necessary to break any rebellion and hang the rebels.

His biographer, Holman Hamilton, noted that Taylor, as a Southern slave owner who opposed slavery extension as well as secession, had enormous credibility on such questions. His untimely death in 1850 enabled compromisers to enact measures that postponed the war. Later, Grant’s military victories settled these questions once and for all, and helped enable the greatest transformation of African-Americans in U.S. history, from slaves to full citizens. As president, Grant fought vigorously to protect the rights of the freed slaves.

Taylor and Grant both locked horns with Democratic presidents from Tennessee that each would succeed. President James K. Polk tried to extinguish Taylor’s success in the Mexican War (and thus stamp out the growing Taylor for president movement) by depleting his army and endorsing General Winfield Scott’s plan to take Mexico City. Twenty years later, although it was not yet clear that they would be in opposing factions, President Andrew Johnson tried a similar, see-sawing plan with Grant and his lieutenant, General William Tecumseh Sherman. Johnson offered Sherman the job as Secretary of War just after the Civil War, which would have had Sherman leapfrogging Grant. Johnson also tried to use Grant as both a buffer from, and a hammer against, his Radical Republican opponents in Congress.

Although authors have typically and easily depicted Taylor and Grant as weak chief executives, historians such as Hamilton, Smith, Frank Scaturro, and Josiah Bunting have made compelling and detailed arguments otherwise. Even Taylor’s critical 1985 biographer K. Jack Bauer acknowledged that Taylor’s death cut short a talented and promising administration. Both presidents were strong executives still able to delegate, fiscal conservatives, and adept diplomats.

When considering the political legacies of Taylor and Grant, the bottom line is clear: both (like Lincoln between them) were unshakable Unionists with a complete devotion to the Constitution.