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The crypt of Zachary Taylor will be opened Monday to test an mithor’s theory that the 12th president of ilie United States was assassinated with poison 141 years ago.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs granted approval Friday the Jefierson County Coroner Richard Greathouse to open the crypt in the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery, which contains the remains of Taylor and his wife.
Clara Rising of Holder, Fla., who is gathering information for a book on Taylor, planned to be present when Greathouse removes a sample of Taylor’s remains for analysis.
Greathouse plans to see if there’s an trace of poison through the analysis of piece of hair, fingernail or bone. Dr. William Maples, a forensic anthropologist at the university of Florida in Gainesville who specializes in skeletal remains, also is expected to be on hand Monday. He believes Taylor’s syptoms were consistent with arsenic poisoning.
History books would have to be rewrit ten should Taylor’s death be confirmed as a homicide. Abraham Lincoln, the nations 16th president, is regarded as the first American leader to be assassinated
But another expert who wrote a recen book on Taylor believes there’s little chance for a rewrite of history.
Dr. Filbert Smith, professor emeritus of the University of Maryland Department or History, said he’d be “shocked and astounded" if there was any evidence that Taylor was poisoned.
Taylor died of gastroenteritis, whict became acute because of malpractice by the attending physicians, Smith said. Smith, author of “The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore," said there would have been no motive or opportunity to kill Taylor. “He was the Eisenhower of his time." Smith said.
Taylor’s staff small, trusted. Smith said the White House staff was so small and so trusted in Taylor’s day that it would have been impossible fbr anyone to poison him.
Rising has been conducting research for a book on Taylor for 16 mouths. She is exploring the possibility that someone put arsenic in fruit that Taylor ate a few days before his death on July 9, 1850, according to Greathouse. Smith said Taylor 65, did some things that could have contributed to his death.
“He sat out in the boiling sun bareheaded listening to a speech for a couple of hours and possibly suffered mild sunstroke, which wouldn’t have been enough to do him in, but then he got back to the White House and ate cherries and cold milk,” Smith said.
"The doctors gave him several concoctions and did terrible things to him, ” Smith said. “I say quite flatly in my book if he hadn’t had doctors, he would have survived.”
Betty Gist, a historian and friend of Rising who lives in Taylor’s boyhood home near the cemetery, believes an anti-slavery position could have been a motive for killing Taylor, who brought California into the union as a free state. Smith disagrees that the slavery issue would have been a motive.
“He owned 140 slaves but opposed trying to make slave states out of California and New Mexico,” Smith said.
Editor’s note: This article about President Zachary Taylor, was sent to us from lona Damazio.
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