WEBVTT - Who is America's Worst President? 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:02.320 Guess what, mango? What's that? Well? All right, so, I 0:00:02.320 --> 0:00:04.000 know there's a lot of debate over whether to keep 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:07.320 Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill, But one thing 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:10.400 there isn't much debate about is what kind of person 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:12.200 Jackson was. Yeah, I think you can sum it up 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:15.440 with one word terrible. I think you're probably accurate on that. 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:18.960 And he was obviously popular, but he was also terrible, 0:00:19.079 --> 0:00:22.079 and especially in his younger day. So let me just 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:25.759 read you this little passage from Cormac McCarthy's Wonderful Secret 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:28.200 Lives of Presidents. I know it's always been one of 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:30.640 our favorites to turn to when reading about the presidents, 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:34.599 But here's how he puts it. Stories of Jackson's hooliganism abound. 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:38.040 When asked to organize the local dancing school's Christmas ball, 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:42.239 he secretly invited two of the town's most experienced prostitutes, 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:45.960 causing a scandal. On another occasion, he and his fellow 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:50.600 miscreants demolished a local tavern, beginning with the glassware, advancing 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:53.920 to the furniture, and concluding their sware by setting the 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:58.600 buildings ablaze. Bloys will be boys, as Cormack so he 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:01.720 then continues jack and was also known to complete many 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:04.280 of his wild nights with a practical joke or two. 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:08.440 His favorite moving out houses, the places they couldn't be found. 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:12.640 I mean those are a mix of really awful things 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:15.240 and like kind of funny thing. They are kind of funny, Yeah, 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:17.679 I mean burning and building down isn't that funny? Right? 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:20.360 It is kind of weird that that's who ended up 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:22.640 on our twenty dollar bill, right it is. I mean, 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:26.240 you know, we tend to respect and revere our American presidents, 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:28.880 and when people talk about Andrew Jackson, we talked about 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:31.240 how he was a man of the people, or I 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:33.760 don't know how devoted he was to his wife, or 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:36.280 you know, maybe counter the trail of tears stuff with 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:40.200 how he adopted a Native American son. But it did 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:42.560 make us wonder in some of these conversations, like who 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:46.440 are some of America's worst presidents? Who are the politicians 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.280 who really squandered their opportunities in the Oval office? And 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:52.400 why aren't they getting any elementary schools named after them? 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:55.080 I think that's the goal, after all. So that's what 0:01:55.160 --> 0:02:18.960 today's episode is all about. Let's dive in, y Hey, 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:21.600 their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:23.679 Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.080 man Guesshot Ticketer and sitting on the other side of 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:29.880 the soundproof glass pasting tiny portraits, these tiny little portraits. 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:30.919 I had to go over and look to see who 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:33.560 it was. It's President Taft Mango and he's putting them 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:37.000 onto all of these pennies. That's our friend and producer 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:39.760 Tristan McNeil. Now, of course, this is all part of 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:43.080 Tristan's bigger effort, this ongoing effort to win a little 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:46.360 bit more praise for Taft. I don't know exactly why 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:48.760 he wants to do this or why he's using pennies 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:50.840 as kind of a mystery at this point. Yeah. I 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.320 mean he explained, if anything, to me earlier, and apparently 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:55.560 he just always thought it was unfair that Lincoln gets 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:59.240 the penny and the five dollar bill and while you know, 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:01.280 Taft seems sort of mediocre to me, and he just 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:03.799 has that story about the bathtub. Tristan is really in 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:07.600 awe of him. It is the best presidential bathtub story. 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:09.519 All right. Well, so today's show is all about trying 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:12.480 to figure out who was America's worst president. And even 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:15.400 though the presidency requires all kinds of different skills and 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:19.000 abilities that are difficult to rank across the board, it's 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:21.520 easy to spot the ones who led us into like 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:26.040 economic disaster or maybe fan the flames of civil war. So, 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:30.880 in honor of President taffs aggressively mediocre legacy, what do 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:33.560 you say we sling some mud on his behalf and 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:35.680 and then let's actually talk about some of the real 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:39.160 worst presidents in American history. Well, I do think we 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:41.040 should mention at the outset that we're sticking to the 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:44.200 past year for today's show and focusing only on historical presidents. 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:47.120 So this is more of a ridiculous armchair exercise rather 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:50.920 than anything super political. Nobody recently, nobody. We didn't want 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:54.160 to get any who has been president in the past 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:56.320 thirty years. We have no idea, so we're only talking 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:58.480 about the past. Of course, we will be using some 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:01.920 surveys conducted by his story ends and other presidential authorities 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:04.440 to guide this, and one we did look at was 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:08.640 the two thousand eighteen Presidents and Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey. 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:11.560 It was conducted by the American Political Science Association and 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.360 It compiles the rankings of a hundred seventy different social 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:17.440 science experts and presidential politics. You know, the thing I 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:20.760 like about these surveys is just how consistent the results 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:23.240 tend to be, you know, over over previous years when 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:24.480 you look at them, like if you look at the 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:27.440 one from I guess it was four years ago. Those 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.760 bottom ten presidents, I mean, they're pretty much the same names. 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.760 They tend to move around a little bit, you know, 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:36.240 So we can't claim to know the definitive ranking of 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:39.000 all US presidents. We we can say with at least 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:41.760 some level of certainty that none of these guys are 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:44.520 going to be appearing on new currency anytime soon. Yeah, 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:46.800 and like you said earlier, they're not gonna get elementary 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:50.400 schools or airports. Are probably not too many bubbleheads, uh, 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:52.000 you know in honor of the mind that you could 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:54.560 find a tap bobble out there. I mean I did 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:57.880 find William Henry Harrison trucker hat that everyone I know 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:01.839 now is actually gonna get for Christmas. Pretty awesome. It's 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:04.479 weird that you don't see William Henry Harrison's face on 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:07.440 more like dorm room posters. That seems like something like 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:09.839 we we might try to change that. We'll see, But 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:11.880 I guess he does belong on this list since he 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.440 died a pneumonia like thirty days after his inauguration. So 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.480 of course he wasn't a great president at the very last. Yeah, 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:20.160 he didn't get a chance. But I do want to 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:22.760 disagree with you on not one, but two of the 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:25.680 points you just say. So for starters, we are sure 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:28.240 it was pneumonia that did in the ninth president. So, 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:30.839 I mean, the story does kind of fit. As we've 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:33.919 talked before. You know, Harrison insisted on giving this ninety 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:38.360 minute undred word inauguration speech on what was this very cold, 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.920 very wet winter day. He didn't wear a hat, so 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:43.240 I mean it tracts that he caught a cold and 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.960 and it eventually worsened into pneumonia. But you know, actually 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:49.640 this is the side. But the doctor treated him for pneumonia, 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:52.239 and the treatment at the time was around the clock 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:56.640 enemas and doses of opium. Oh good god, so awful. 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.480 Sounds horrible. But so if it wasn't pneumonia, what what 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.880 what killed? Yeah? So some modern scholars actually think that 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.640 the real culprit was this deadly bacteria strain, which, uh, 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:08.840 which probably came from all the night soil that had 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:11.000 been dumped just a few blocks away from the White House. 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:15.000 Did you say night soil? Yeah? So, remember we were 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:17.600 talking about the eighteen forties here, so Washington d C. 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:20.960 Didn't have a sewer system yet, and instead the city's 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:22.839 daily dose of experment was hauled the way to this 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:27.320 nearby marsh every single evening, hence the term night soil. Ah, 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:29.960 so you're saying this marsh was just down the street 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:31.599 from the White House. So so maybe it was this 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:34.400 bacteria from what like all the fecal matter that was 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:36.800 in the water supply exactly, And the kind of gastro 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:40.520 intestinal sickness that Harrison went through is commonly linked at 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:42.800 least two different bacteria that would have been found there, 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:45.080 And the theory really starts to look convincing once you 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.480 consider that both James Polke and Zachary Taylor also dealt 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:50.480 with gastro and tritus while living in the White House, 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:53.080 with Taylor even dying in off as just like Harrison did. 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:56.039 All right, so I'll stand corrected on that, or at 0:06:56.120 --> 0:06:58.920 least potentially corrected, But I'm curious that what didn't you 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:01.000 say there was one more thing you to correct me on. Yeah, 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:03.800 I mean the other thing is that Harrison didn't influence 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:06.520 politics because he died so soon after taking office. Because 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:08.880 when you think about it, he actually did some lasting 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:12.240 damage to American politics. And what makes you say that? So, 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:14.960 William Henry Harrison's campaign was really the first to use 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:17.160 food as a way to appeal to social and class 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.560 differences in America. So for background, Harrison tried to portray 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:23.800 himself as this like frontiersman who was tough as nails. 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:26.640 And this was despite the fact that he was well educated, 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.040 came from this wealthy, distinguished Virginia family. But you know, 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:33.280 his campaign took out ads smartly that showed him in 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:35.640 front of a log cabin. I mean it was supposedly 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.400 his log cabin, and uh he also had this big 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.000 barrel of hard cider right out front. And the plan 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:43.280 was to convince voters that Harrison was this man of 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:46.000 the people. You know, he was trying to separate himself 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:48.960 from the fat catalytist that Martin Van Buren could be 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:53.320 seen as or Vanny Bee is. So his campaign took 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:55.920 to calling him the log cabin and hard cider candidate, 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:58.520 and he was this man who lived and drank just 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:01.400 like I guess the real Pete. Well, the plan worked, 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:03.920 I guess right, I mean he got elected. Yeah, it 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:06.880 wasn't much of a contest. Presidential candidates didn't even campaign 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:09.920 for themselves prior to Harrison, and Van Buren was no exception, 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:12.480 so you couldn't really push back on these elitist rumors. 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:16.160 But Harrison did an incredible job. Like he held these 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:20.320 massive rallies town after town. Sometimes they had sixty people 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.640 out on them, and he was just like a ridiculous party. 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.400 His supporters were rolling logs all over the place and 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:28.920 handing out hard cider, and he even had these custom 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.000 log cabin shaped bottles made for the events. Like it 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:34.360 really marked the first time that a politician used food 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:36.760 as a shorthand for social class. Well, it makes me 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:39.600 think about that phrase that sometimes people use that we 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:42.199 often shut her at when somebody just talks about how 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:44.440 they would vote based on who they'd rather have a 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.640 beer with. Ins Yeah, exactly, And I guess you can 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.000 blame William Henry Harrison for that. We think about it, 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.480 so yes, I will give him a mark against them 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:56.559 for that and all let's stick to the time like 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.040 for a minute and talk about Harrison's success or, who is, 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:03.040 of course John Tiler and another less than stellar president. 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:05.720 And Tyler is an interesting case because he was actually 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:08.280 the first person to ascend to the presidency from the 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:11.480 vice presidency. Yeah, and there weren't even rules in place 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:13.960 for that kind of succession, right, Like the whole vice 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:16.760 president rule wasn't in place until the nineteen sixties when 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:19.640 we added the twenty fifth Amendment. Yeah, that's right. So 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.199 Tyler was really in unchartered territory. And this is where 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:26.920 his questionable legacy starts to crop up, because rather than 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:30.080 continuing to act as vice president until Congress and the 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.439 Supreme Court could figure out a solution, Tyler said went 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:36.560 out and quickly found a district judge, just some district 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:40.160 judge to swear him in. So effectively, John Tyler made 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:42.880 himself president. Though I mean, I guess you could argue 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:45.560 that the twenty five Amendment would later vindicate his actions, 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:47.760 even if that was what a hundred and twenty years 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:51.320 after the but you know, think about this, putting him 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:53.000 aside for just a second. I try not to speak 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:56.160 ill of any first lady, just on principle. But I've 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:58.520 got to say that Julia Tyler really didn't do her 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:02.120 husband any favors. Apparently she would hold these receptions at 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.400 the White House where she would sit on a dais 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:07.040 with a wreath of flowers on her head, and she 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.679 would ask everyone in attendance to call her Mrs presidentists. 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:13.360 I mean, I don't know anything about being a first lady, 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:16.360 but if the president's legitimacy is in question, maybe don't 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:21.120 you that? You know, even Tyler's own party didn't give 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:23.520 him a pass on all his succession stuff Like I 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:27.120 remember reading how they started calling Tyler his accidency and 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:31.000 apparently every member of the Harrison appointed cabinet resigned in protest. 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:34.480 That's impressive. Well, and Tyler really threw the Whig Party 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:36.840 under the bus when he became president. In fact, he 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:40.439 pretty much took the opposing position on every issue the 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:43.600 party had been backing, including the need for a national 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:45.920 bank and whether or not state should be allowed to 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.280 seceed on account of slavery. Tyler did manage to fight 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:52.160 off early attempts to impeach him and made it through 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:55.000 his single term, but by the time he died less 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:57.719 than two decades later, he was considered a trader by 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:00.439 most people in Washington. And you know, at that point 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.920 it wasn't even an exaggeration, Like he had helped advocate 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:07.120 for Virginia's secession and he was all set to join 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.280 the Confederate House of Representatives before his death kind of 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:13.199 mixed those plans. I mean, you don't want to heat 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:16.000 more dirt on this guy's legacy. But I was reading 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:18.760 about Tyler in the Secret Lives of the U S Presidents, 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:22.000 which you know, I've got to say, I love Cormack O'Brien. 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:24.000 He was on the show Nicest Guy, and this book 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:26.200 is so great, but he makes it sound like Tyler 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:28.720 was kind of cowardly as well on top of everything else. 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:32.320 Like just listen to this quote. Tyler's estrangement from the 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:35.240 Whig Party was no joke. Angry mobs made a habit 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:37.080 of showing up at the White House. Some even burned 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.400 him in effigy. There were also plenty of bomb threats. Once, 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:42.760 when an unmarked package arrived at the White House, a 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:45.000 staff member was called to look at it, but Tyler 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:48.120 hid behind a marble column. The servant proceeded to hack 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:50.720 the parcel to pieces with a meat cleaver, only to 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:54.240 reveal a dilapidated toy. In a unique act of pity, 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:58.120 Congress past Tyler's bill, which provided the first federally funded 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:02.080 White House security. All right, well, let's leave Tyler over there, 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:05.319 just kind of cowering behind his favorite marble column and 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:08.079 and talk about another pair of bad presidents who also 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.400 followed right on each other's heels, And that's Zachary Taylor 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:14.719 and Millard Fillmore. Absolutely, But before we dive in, let's 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:31.480 take a quick break. You're listening to part time genius. 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:34.199 So we're talking about the most terrible, horrible, no good, 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.360 very bad presidents in US history, or at least the 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.080 ones historians like the least I'm speaking of, which the 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:42.400 next guy on our list is the country's twelfth president. 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:45.280 And then that was Zachary Taylor. And he's an interesting 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:48.320 case because, unlike John Tyler and other presidents who were 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:51.960 disliked both in their own time and today, Zachary Taylor 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:54.640 was actually pretty popular in his day. Yeah, I mean, 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:56.200 it kind of helps that he was only in office 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:58.320 for what like a year, and people didn't have that 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:00.800 much to form bad opinions about him. I guess it's 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:02.840 true he died pretty quickly. But but you know, it 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:05.400 wasn't just his brief time in office that gave people 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.560 this rosy view of him. I mean, before becoming president 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:11.640 in eighteen forty nine, Taylor had already spent some forty 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.760 odd years fighting no less than four different wars for 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:16.760 the U. S. Army. I mean, the guy was a 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:20.079 war hero, had this career that stretched from the War 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:23.760 of eighteen twelve to the Mexican War, had that nickname 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:26.560 all rough and ready tried to get people to call 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:29.360 me that, but nobody's nobody's sticking to it, and it 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:31.000 seems to have been one of those nicknames that was 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:34.000 actually pretty well earned in his case. So I'm guessing, then, like, 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:36.440 how does he wind up on this worst President's list? 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:39.520 It's partly because he spent such a brief time in 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:41.840 office that he just didn't get much done, much like 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:45.280 William Henry Harrison before him. But it really makes Taylor 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:47.840 unpopular now. Is actually all the stuff that made him 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.600 popular in his day. For instance, that that long military 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:54.040 career of his, the one that helped him get elected, 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:57.440 it actually includes some really brutal campaigns. When you think 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:01.520 about the seminoles and the Chippewa tribes effectively got were 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.600 driven from their land. And you know, then there's Taylor's 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.360 muddle stance on slavery. You know, on the one hand, 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:11.040 Taylor opposed the creation of new slave states and fought 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:14.079 hard for the western territories to only be admitted as 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:16.680 free states. But on the other hand, he was a 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:21.680 slaveholder himself, had multiple plantations and over aden slave persons 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:24.960 to his name, So I'm curious if you're a slave owner, like, 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:28.880 why would you engage in all this like anti slavery rhetoric. Well, 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.160 I mean, it turns out Taylor wasn't morally opposed to slavery, 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:34.960 and I guess that's pretty obvious given his track record there. 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:37.680 But he just recognized that there was growing opposition to 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:40.480 the practice. And you know, they used people needed to 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:43.960 be catered to in order to avoid civil war, and 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:47.160 Taylor was determined to preserve the Union and this was 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:50.040 by force if necessary. Like there was one time in 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:53.479 eighteen fifty when a few Southern leaders started threatening secession 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:56.480 and Taylor was so angry about this he swore he 0:14:56.520 --> 0:14:59.520 would personally lead the army against them if they went 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:03.320 through it. Again, this was probably more out of his, 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:06.840 you know, four decades of military service and wanting to 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:09.080 be involved in those sorts of conflicts than it was 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.840 any sort of personal conviction against slavery. So I mean, 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:14.640 I guess he wound up doing the right thing, but 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:17.400 maybe for the wrong reasons, or at least not for 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:19.920 all the right reasons. And it's easy to see how 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:21.920 that kind of a moral thinking would diminish his standing 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:24.760 in hindsight. Plus, you know, he didn't have a very 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:27.440 dignified death. All right, Well, we've kind of beaten around 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:28.760 the bush on this one, so I feel like you 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:30.920 should go ahead and tell the story. Yeah, I think 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:33.240 we've probably talked about it a little before, but I 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:35.760 love the details of this. So it was July four 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:39.160 and Taylor has been in office for a little over 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:41.640 a year now, and he's due to appear at this 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:44.000 big Independence Day party at the side of the future 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:47.440 Washington Monument. And the problem is DC's in the middle 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:51.040 of this blistering heat wave. And if that wasn't bad enough, 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:53.840 there's also a bad outbreak of cholera, and nobody's supposed 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:56.520 to drink water or eat rough rout without knowing exactly 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:58.680 where it came from. But you know, this is old 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:01.400 rough and Ready we're talking about, and he's still going 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:04.320 to go to the event. So he sits through the speeches, 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:07.040 he makes one of his own, and meanwhile, the whole time, 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:10.000 he and everyone else are just getting baked in the sun. Right, 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:12.000 And so once it's over, he stumbles back to the 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:16.080 White House, and he is thirsty. He immediately drinks all 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:18.440 the water in sight. Then he proceeds to drink all 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:21.000 the iced milk on hand, and then he wolves down 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:23.640 a whole bowl of cherries that someone left on the kitchen. 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:26.440 So you know, he is not afraid of anything, and 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:29.880 this does the trick. He feels satisfied, except that, you know, 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.200 the next day he's doubled over with the stomach cramps 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:35.440 and then he starts displaying these symptoms of gastro and tritus, 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:39.120 and four unpleasant days later, Taylor becomes the second president 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:41.560 to die in office. I mean, it does make you 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:43.680 feel for the guy a little bit to think about 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:46.280 the fact that he lived through four separate wars only 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:48.280 to be taken out by what you said, ice milk 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:50.680 and a bowl of cherries. Yeah, I mean I honestly 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:52.440 think about this every summer when I'm looking at like 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:54.880 a big bowl of cherries in the kitchen, and I'm 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:58.000 always like, you know, a president died for him drinking 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:00.320 ice milk and too many cherries. And of course I 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:02.560 just scarf from down anyway, because Jerry's are so delicious, 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:05.800 such a risk taker. I mean, it does feel like 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:09.240 a cruel twist to fight even for this irredeemable racist. 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:11.879 But because nobody is all bad, I do want to 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:14.439 mention that President Taylor had a beloved pet. It was 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:18.199 this old white horse named Old Whitey, creative name, and 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:20.560 he kept Old Whitey on the White House lawn. And 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:23.040 when Taylor died, the horse was actually part of the 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:27.080 funeral procession, marching right there behind his master's coffin. I 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:28.679 like that. The nicest thing you can say is that 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.160 he had a horse that participated in his future, right 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:36.239 right willingly. So you know, it's still probably more than 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:38.840 you could say for his successor, Millard Fillmore, who took 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:41.800 over after Taylor died, and he became another president who 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.760 no one really wanted. You know, Fillmore did have one 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:48.040 thing going for him over his predecessor. While Taylor had 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:50.040 the looks you'd expect from someone who had spent forty 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:53.160 years in combat. Fillmore was actually the super sharp dressor. 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:56.439 He was good looking. In fact, Queen Victoria thought so. 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:59.440 After meeting him at court. She supposedly called him the 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:02.720 handsomest man she'd ever met. So it sounds like he 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:04.720 was sort of the opposite of Taylor, at least in 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:07.120 terms of looks. But but what about his policy where 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:09.640 the opposites in that regard to Yeah, they kind of were. 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.760 So remember how Taylor had been politically opposed to slavery 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:16.040 but personally for it. Well, Fillmore was the reverse of that. 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:18.800 He claimed to be personally against the practice. And this 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.040 actually might have come because his family was so poor 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:22.720 when he was growing up that he was sold into 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:25.479 indentured servitude as a kid. I think he learned to 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:28.560 read by stealing books, and uh, eventually he did buy 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:31.920 his way out. But it's strange because the main highlight 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:34.600 of his whole tenure is getting the Compromise of eighteen 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:37.320 fifty past, and this was something Taylor had opposed because 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:39.040 he thought it was too big a win for southern 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:42.680 slavers alright, So so why did fill More than support 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:46.880 the bills. Well, Taylor had prevented secession during his brief term, 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:49.160 but the South wasn't happy about his plan to admit 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:52.320 only free states from then on, and this growing anger 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:55.240 made feel more nervous that Southerners might move forward with 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:58.199 secession or even the outright war might break out, so 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:01.480 filmore back the compromise out fear more than anything else. 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:04.080 And while the bills did do some good for the nation, 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:07.080 like adding California to the Union as this free state 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:09.639 and banged the slave trade in d C, the negative 0:19:09.680 --> 0:19:12.480 outcomes sort of outweighed that. And this was partially through 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:15.399 the addition of the Fugitive Slave Act, which obligated the 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:18.320 federal government to return fugitive slaves to their masters. This 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.440 was regardless of whether the states they were found and 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.919 were free or not. And this was a massive, massive 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:27.439 setback for abolitionists and it actually further the political divide 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:29.639 that was growing in the country. So it sounds like 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:32.400 he basically sold out his principles to try and keep 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.000 the peace, which I mean that's a hard line to keep. Yeah, 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:37.600 he's another president whose reputation is only worse than as 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.320 the years go by, and the cost of his decisions, 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:42.560 you know, they start to look more and more unconscionable 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:45.520 with time, and that shifting view on Filmore is actually 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.280 something that started as early as two decades after the compromise. 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:50.959 So in eighteen seventy, in an addition to the New 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:55.119 York Times, the paper wrote, quote, it was Fillmore's misfortune 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:58.760