MARGARET SMITH, wife of General Zachary Taylor, was the daughter of a Maryland planter. Domestic in taste and devoted to her husband, she lived much in garrisons and afield, making a home wherever she was called. She was without social ambition, and therefore had no desire to preside at the White House, preferring her quiet home at Baton Rouge, where she and her youngest daughter, "Miss Betty," were widely known and liked, and where she permanently established an Episcopal church. When her husband was elected President, she relinquished the duties of hostess to Mrs. Bliss (Miss Betty), then but twenty-two years of age, whose grace of manner and youthful charms relieved the formality of Mrs. Polk's previous reign. Their residence at the White House was suddenly terminated by the President's death, sixteen months after his inauguration. Mrs. Taylor died two years later, at the home of her only son in Louisiana.

TAYLOR

During Zachary Taylor's brief incumbency of the great office of President, for which he never thought himself well qualified, he was a tower of strength to the Union and blocked all the ambitious projects. of the slave power. In considering the admission of new States to the Union, he recommended that they be admitted on their merits, and that the question of slavery be left to them for settlement. This position provoked much opposition in Congress and became the subject that agitated the public mind during almost the entire time that he was in executive control. Having information as to the fitting out of an armed expedition with the intention of evidently invading the island of Cuba, on August 11, 1849, he issued a proclamation of warning against engaging in such an enterprise so grossly in violation of our laws and our treaty obligations, and calling upon every officer of the Government, civil or military, to use all efforts in his power to arrest for trial and punishment every such offender against the laws providing for the performance of our sacred obligations to friendly powers.

His term of office was too short, and the questions that came before him too much of one general character to enable us to form an adequate opinion of his abilities as a civil administrator. He was open and direct in his methods; his state papers are models of pure and virile English, and the honesty of his purpose is beyond cavil.

In the single year of his administration he advocated some great improvements, the wisdom of which is only beginning to be fully appreciated. One of these measures was a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He worked earnestly to secure a location for such a canal, either Nicaragua or by way of Tehuantepec or across the Isthmus of Panama. His views on that subject, in stating the objects of that treaty, are well worth quoting at the present time. He said: "This treaty has been negotiated in accordance with the general views expressed in my message to Congress in December last. Its object is to establish a commercial alliance with all great maritime states for the protection of a contemplated ship canal through the territory of Nicaragua to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and at the same time to insure the same protection to the contemplated railways or canals by the Tehuantepec and Panama routes, as well as to every other interoceanic communication which may be adopted to shorten the transit to or from our territories on the Pacific. It will be seen that this treaty does not propose to take money from the public Treasury to effect any object contemplated by it. It yields protection to the capitalists who may undertake to construct any canal or railway across the Isthmus, commencing in the