Northeast Minneapolis (and towns due north of us) feature Avenues named after our country's presidents. Some of them anyway. I've decided to make a series based on their lives, but I absolutely refuse to look anything up. So... I advise you not to use this for your term paper.
Several interesting facts about President Zachary Taylor
James Taylor is so far as we know the only American President to have a sea shanty sung about him (leaving aside the unsingable “Haul that anchor and vote for Trump”). Here it is, sung at the Dubliner in St Paul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVZdlKU9BDA. And yeah, I’m the room there somewhere.
Taylor was in fact a general before he was president. He was also a generalist. His campaign begged him to get specific, but he pointed out that vague campaign promises like “I’ll do good things and you’ll think I’m great” are a lot easier to fulfill. So he generally remained a general general. He was the third of a long string of generals to climb to the presidency, preceded by followed by Generals Washington and Harrison, and followed by Generals Grant, Eisenhower, Mills, Motors, and Theory of Relativity.
Taylor was also the second president to die in office. After William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia from giving a long inauguration speech in the bitter cold, the Presidential Medical Corps (Hale to the Chief) worked hard to keep the executive branch warm. Taylor gave a speech on a sweltering hot fourth of July wrapped in scarves, wool jacket, and winter boots. He died of apoplexy (heat stroke basically). No really, that part is true, I remember that from my eighth-grade term paper on Millard Fillmore. Anyway, they replaced the Medical Corps with a new crew under Fillmore, who taught a philosophy of “Goldilocks speeches.” President Harrison’s speech was toooo cold, President Taylor’s speech was toooo hot, and so from now on (they declared) we will only have Baby Bear’s speeches, which are juuuust right. Taylor was the last president to die in office of sickness until Warren Harding in 1920. The rest of the nineteenth century presidential deaths involved firearms.
Congrats to Dode222 for the FTF!