History will not have to be rewritten; President Zachary Taylor was not assassinated in 1850.
Kentucky's chief medical examiner, Dr. George Nichols, announced to a packed press conference here Wednesday that a series of sophisticated forensic tests all came to that conclusion."President Taylor was not poisoned with arsenic," he said, shattering the speculations of Florida author Clara Rising and many history buffs over the years who felt the 12th U.S. president was a victim of foul play.
"It's not borderline," Nichols said. "He was not poisoned."
Nichols added that one of the tests also measured for other poisonous substances, including lead and mercury, and the results were negative.
"He probably died as a result of one of a myriad of natural diseases that were present at the time and still exist today, whose symptoms include gastroenteritis," Nichols said, adding that there's not enough soft tissue left in Taylor's remains to find a cause of death.
The 10-day investigation started after Rising convinced Taylor family members that Taylor's death was too suspect - and too politically convenient for some - not to look into.
Nichols and Jefferson County coroner Richard Greathouse agreed because Taylor's symptoms mirrored arsenic poisoning.
So they ordered the body exhumed on June 17, took samples of head and body hair, fingernails and toenails, bone and part of the soft tissue that remained.
Tests were run by different people in different labs and using different methods. All found the same thing, Nichols said: The minute traces of arsenic found in Taylor's remains are not enough to reflect arsenic poisoning.
"To show arsenic poisoning, the levels would have to be 200 if not thousands of times greater" than the levels of between 1.6 and 2.0 micrograms found by each test.
Taylor died after 16 months in office in July 1850. Known as "Old Rough and Ready," Taylor was the Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf of the Mexican War. As president, he insisted that California and New Mexico be admitted to the Union as slavery-free states and opposed any compromise with Southern politicians on the subject of extending slavery. When some began talking of secession from the Union, Taylor threatened to quash that movement.
His death, historians say, paved the way for the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act - both concessions to the South widely regarded as having postponed the Civil War.
According to accounts of the time, Taylor fell ill after a cornerstone-laying ceremony at the Washington Monument on July 4, 1850. After returning home that day, he ate some fruit and drank cold milk and later became violently ill. His symptoms - severe vomiting, diarrhea and dehydration - are consistent with arsenic poisoning, but also with several naturally occurring diseases as well.