Home

1848 Nov 7

General Zachary Taylor was elected president of US.

Source:(http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/U.S._presidential_election,_1848)(HNPD, 7/11/98)

Millard Fillmore was vice-president. With the exception of South Carolina, who left the selection of electors to its legislature, the election of 1848 marked the first time in which every state in the union voted for President and Vice President on the same day: Taylor won election over Cass, capturing 163 of the 290 electoral votes cast. Zachary Taylor, a Southerner, a slaveholder and the hero of the Mexican War, had been nominated by the Party as a candidate for president of the US. He was an inoffensive candidate in the anxious years leading up to the Civil War because he had never taken a position on a political issue or even cast a vote in his life. During his 16 months as president, Congress addressed the explosive issue of slavery’s expansion to the west with the Compromise of 1850, but Taylor himself never had the opportunity to act on this issue.