The crypt of Zachary Taylor will be opened Monday to test an author's theory that the 12th president of the United States was assassinated with poison 141 years ago.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs granted approval Friday for Jefferson 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 any trace of poison through the analysis of a 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 symptoms were consistent with arsenic poisoning.
History books would have to be rewritten should Taylor's death be confirmed as a homicide. Abraham Lincoln, the nation's 16th president, is regarded as the first American leader to be assassinated.
But another expert who wrote a recent book on Taylor believes there's little chance for a rewrite of history.
Dr. Elbert B. Smith, professor emeritus of the University of Maryland department of history, said he'd be "shocked and astounded" if there was any evidence that Taylor was poisoned.
Taylor died of gastroenteritis, which 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.
Smith said the White House staff was so small and so trusted in Taylor's day that it would have been impossible for anyone to poison him.
Rising has been conducting research for a book on Taylor for 16 months. 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. Rising was traveling Friday and could not be reached for comment.
Smith said Taylor, 65, did some things that could have contributed to his death.
"He sat out in the boiling sun bare-headed 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. "He tried to bring both of them in as states with each one making its own decision (on slavery). He didn't care whether it was pro or con."