DEATH OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR.
He died in the second year of his presidency, suddenly, and
unexpectedly, of violent fever, brought on by long exposure to
the burning heat of a fourth of July sun--noted as the warmest of
the season. He attended the ceremonies of the day, sitting out
the speeches, and omitting no attention which he believed the
decorum of his station required. It cost him his life. The ceremony
took place on Friday: on the Tuesday following, he was dead--the
violent attack commencing soon after his return to the presidential
mansion. He was the first President elected upon a reputation purely
military. He had been in the regular army from early youth. Far from
having ever exercised civil office, he had never even voted at an
election, and was a major-general in the service, at the time of
his election. Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and Buena
Vista, were his titles to popular favor--backed by irreproachable
private character, undoubted patriotism, and established reputation
for judgment and firmness. His brief career showed no deficiency
of political wisdom for want of previous political training. He
came into the administration at a time of great difficulty, and
acted up to the emergency of his position. The slavery agitation
was raging; the Southern manifesto had been issued: California,
New Mexico, Utah, were without governments: a Southern Congress
was in process of being called, the very name of which implied
disunion: a Southern convention was actually called, and met, to
consult upon disunion. He met the whole crisis firmly, determined
to do what was right among all the States, and to maintain the
Federal Union at all hazards. His first, and only annual message,
marked out his course. The admission of California as a State was
recommended by him, and would avoid all questions about slavery.
Leaving Utah and New Mexico to ripen into State governments, and
then decide the question for themselves, also avoided the question
in those territories where slavery was then extinct under the laws
of the country from which they came to the United States. Texas had
an unsettled boundary on the side of New Mexico. President Taylor
considered that question to be one between the United States and New
Mexico, and not between New Mexico and Texas; and to be settled by
the United States in some legal and amicable way--as, by compact,
by mutual legislation, or judicial decision. Some ardent spirits
in Texas proposed to take possession of one half of New Mexico, in
virtue of a naked pretension to it, founded in their own laws and
constitution. President Taylor would have resisted that pretension,
and protected New Mexico in its ancient actual possession until the
question of boundary should have been settled in a legal way. His
death was a public calamity. No man could have been more devoted
to the Union, or more opposed to the slavery agitation; and his
position as a Southern man, and a slave-holder--his military
reputation, and his election by a majority of the people and of the
States--would have given him a power in the settlement of these
questions which no President without these qualifications could have
possessed. In the political division he classed with the whig party,
but his administration, as far as it went, was applauded by the
democracy, and promised to be so to the end of his official term.
Dying at the head of the government, a national lamentation bewailed
his departure from life and power, and embalmed his memory in the
affections of his country.
ADMINISTRATION OF MILLARD FILLMORE.