Taylor himself enslaved more than one hundred Black men, women, and children. Chiefly by growing cotton, they made him a wealthy man. As a budding politician concerned about disunion, he wanted free Americans to discuss their differences peacefully. As a Southern enslaver, however, he was not willing to sacrifice his financial interests for unity and peace. If antislavery Northerners went too far, he wrote in his letter of August 16, “let the South act promptly, boldly & decisively with arms in their hands if necessary, as the union in that case will be blown to atoms, or will be no longer worth preserving.”
Taylor wrote that letter to one of his sons-in-law: Jefferson Davis. A future U.S. president was promoting armed rebellion, under certain conditions, to the man who, during the Civil War, would serve as president of the Confederacy.
After becoming president, however, Taylor tempered his proslavery stance. As a general and a candidate, he had placed his public duty—in those cases, his superiors’ orders and the voters’ wishes—above his private preferences. As president, when it came to slavery, he did the same.
In 1849 and 1850, Taylor and Congress weighed whether to admit California and New Mexico—parts of the land acquired from Mexico—as states. Taylor supported doing so, even though both states’ proposed constitutions would ban slavery. While still profiting from the labor of Americans he enslaved in Mississippi, he believed the West inhospitable to growing cotton and accepted White male westerners’ antislavery decision.
Many Southerners in Congress disagreed. Several visited the White House to protest Taylor’s plan. They implied—as Taylor had earlier—that enacting an antislavery measure would prompt Southern states to secede. Taylor retorted that he would suppress any such rebellion—possibly leading the army in person—and would execute traitors.
President Taylor, in short, put the Union first. Perhaps his personal support of slavery had softened. Perhaps he thought western bans a fair concession to slavery’s opponents. In any case, he again subordinated an expressed private conviction to the responsibilities of his office. Despite his earlier conditional support for secession and civil war to defend slavery, he now upheld his presidential oath to defend the Constitution.