Poison or Tummy Ache? The Death of President Zachary Taylor

Did the 12th president die by poison or from a classic case of tummy ache??? 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. Here's a thought, filth heads, I'm really
confused why the leaders and politicians, etc. Of the United
States of America are obsessed with getting more territory, because
the thing about getting more territory, you know, like manifest

(00:28):
destiny all that bull crap. The thing about that is
that when once you have that new territory, then you
have to go to that new territory and you have
to live there. Aka, you have to move. Have you
guys moved before. It's the worst possible thing to do.
It makes you completely mentally unwell, it makes you fight

(00:50):
with everyone you love, and then you just have to
unpack all your shit and it's horrible. And even back
then it was more horrible because then you couldn't just
walk down to a CVS and get all the toiletries
you accidentally forgot. You had to like make your toil
the trees, or just have your teeth wrought out of
your head, even though that probably would have happened anyway.

(01:14):
But let's go to like mid nineteenth century United States.
This is before the Civil War. There's all these tensions. Obviously,
the United States had new territory, and some people were like,
we should have slavery there, and then other people were like,
we shouldn't have slavery there, which earlier in the century
led to things like the Missouri Compromise of eighteen twenty,

(01:35):
and then in eighteen fifty there was the Compromise of
eighteen fifty. What a creative name. And what that did
is that it allowed Utah and New Mexico to decide
for themselves whether or not they wanted to have slavery.
A lot of things happened with this, But you know,
whenever we expanded, people were like, should we have slavery?

(01:56):
Should we not? And one person who had a kind
of confusing view on this was President Zachary Taylor. He
was the twelfth president of the United States. Like, who
the heck is that guy? I don't know nothing about him.
He was a big guy in the military. He fought

(02:16):
in the War of eighteen twelve. He got this nickname
Old Rough and Ready, which could be used for an
OnlyFans account, but mostly was being like, oh, yeah, he
would go and fight alongside his soldiers in the field. Yeah,
he was down to get nasty out there on the battlefield.
And the other thing about him is he actually opposed

(02:37):
the expansion of slavery into new territories, but not for
the reasons you would probably like. He in fact was
a slave owner. He had a lot of slaves. But
he just thought if we expanded slavery, it would be impractical.
He's like, I'm in the South. We grow all these
cash crops, but those crops they're not going to work

(02:58):
out west, So why would we have slavery. It's impractical. Yes,
he opposed slavery because be impractical to expand it, not
because he was actually against the practice in general. But
he was elected to the presidency in eighteen forty eight,
but he only served sixteen months. And why is that? Well,

(03:21):
it's a bit of a filthy tale, So let's get
into it. Que the theme song, this is American Filth,
and I'm Gabby Watts. Every week I tell you a
filthy story from American history. This week's episode the death
of President Zacharytaylor. So you guys are probably noticing that

(04:02):
there's not that many more minutes of this episode. It's
a bit of a short one. And so the whole
reason I was talking about how moving is bad earlier
in the episode is because that's what I'm doing right now,
I have just moved, I'm unpacking, and so I decide
instead of doing full length episode, we're gonna do this
is kind of like more of a fun fact episode

(04:23):
that you could bring up, you know, at a cool
dinner party. You're like, oh, here, do you know why
Zachary Taylor died? And then they'll be like, I have
no idea, And then you can just repeat this episode
verbatim because it'll be pretty short, but still it's a
fun and lurid, filthy tale. So, as I said, Zachary

(04:44):
Taylor was the twelfth President of the United States, and
he died sixteen months into his presidency. Here's what happened.
Cue some like true crimey music. So on July fourth,
eighteen fifty, he attended a ceremony for the Fourth of

(05:08):
July at the Washington Monument and then the next day, gasp,
he had a sudden fever and his tummy hurt. And
then he died a few days later, on July ninth,
eighteen fifty, at the age of sixty five. Now, at

(05:30):
the time, he didn't have any health issues. He was
doing great. He was a young sixty five, more like
a sixty two, you know, and then this weird illness
came on so swiftly that some historians today still think
that he might have been assassinated. Thunderclap thunderclap ah. At

(05:54):
the time, as well, people didn't know exactly why he died. Remember,
medicine was bad. They were just guessing, unlike today, when
everything works. Historians think he might have been assassinated because
at that ceremony he ate something that they think could
have been poisoned. And who would want to poison Zachary Taylor, Well,

(06:18):
people who wanted to expand slavery again. Even though he
was someone who owned slaves, he did not want it
to be expanded. So someone who did want it maybe
came into the ceremony, sprinkled a little arsenic or whatever
into his food, skirt, skirted away, and then Zachary Taylor died.

(06:42):
By this debate over how he died got so intense
that in nineteen ninety one, Zachary Taylor's remains were exhumed
and they did all this forensic testing, and with this
testing they determined dun dun, dunh that it was highly
unlikely that he died from arsenic or other poisoning. I

(07:05):
know so anti climactic. The forensic people were like, we
looked in all the nooks and crannies, couldn't find a
single little tiny particle of arsenic anywhere. Some people still
didn't agree with this. They're like, hey, he died a

(07:26):
long time ago. This was in nineteen ninety one. He
died in eighteen fifty. There's actually no way at this
point that you could tell or not tell that he
died from arsenic. The body's too old. So maybe he
was poisoned, and some people they're really just holding onto that.
Perhaps are the same people who believe the Earth is flat.

(07:47):
I don't know, but the prevailing, more likely theory of
how he died does go back to what he ate
at the ceremony. There are some newspaper reports that said
that while he was there, President Taylor was going went
down on some cherries, face first, fisting them, throwing them

(08:13):
into his mouth. He ate a lot of cherries that
it was remarkable enough to report on. And not only
did he have a lot of cherries, he also drank
a lot of milk on ice. That's right, some iced milk,
yum yum. July fourth, hot and sweaty cherries and milk. Okay,

(08:33):
everyone's favorite summer treat, piles of cherries, slurping down milk,
berries and cream of the eighteen fifties, and so yeah,
it was July fourth. He was in Washington, d c.
DC at the time was a disgusting, unhygienic marshland. Things

(08:58):
would get contaminated all the time if they sat outside
for too long. It was probably disgusting. Something got into
that milk, something got into those cherries, and so he
probably died from contaminated food and from getting a terrible
tummy ache. You know, this is something that men need

(09:22):
to keep in mind. Sometimes you can be a war hero.
You can go boom boom with your guns, you can
go slap slap with your hands. But sometimes when you
go yum yum on some cherries and slurp on some milk,
that's actually what's gonna bring you down. You're not infallible,
your sons of bitches. Is this fun colmentary? I don't know,

(09:48):
but yes, isn't it fun to think about that one
of our presidents, one of the greatest men of the
United States of America, died from eating too many cherries
and drinking too much milk. And as always we learn
a lesson on a man filth and I think the
lesson that we learn here is don't trust a buffet.

(10:10):
Don't ever. You never know what's happened to that food,
who's put their hands on that food, what's flown into
that food. So don't you dare let me catch you
at a Golden Corral or at the Ruby Tuesday's Salad Bar.
And also, don't drink a bunch of milk outside in
the summer. You're nasty if you do that. Anyway, guys,

(10:33):
I hope you had fun with this episode. We're elo
welling and we'll be back next week with a longer episode,
and in the meantime, avoid Cherry's and milk. C you
the credits. American Film is a production of School of
Humans and iHeart Podcast. This episode was hosted, produced, etc

(10:57):
By me Gabby Watts. Our theme song is by Jesse Niswanger,
and our executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley and
Brandon Barr. You can follow along with the show on
Instagram at American Field Pod and also, as always, give
the podcast some reviews, give it some stars, tell us
what you think about it, even if it's bad that
helps the algorithm. So haters, lovers comment, report back, and

(11:24):
i'll talk at you guys next week. Bye School of Humans.