extremely important subject. Behind me here is a chart on church history. You come over here to the 1700s, and this is a time in America where we have freedom of religion. It's one of the amendments to the Constitution of America. To understand where you are in the world today, you must understand where your country has come. What are the origins of it? We've been studying the presidents of the United States. And the one that we're going to study right now is Zachary Taylor. And I want to show you a picture of him here. There's Zachary Taylor. Now, he was only President of the United States for 16 months. But I want you to understand, all of his adult life he was a servant to the United States of America. He was a servant to the United States of America. Zachary Taylor was a military man. Now, in America, sometimes we don't honor our military like we should. In American history, we have had a lot of senseless and useless wars at times, brought on by presidents and economic opportunists. in America. But it is not the fault of the military man that they're out there in the Persian Gulf or someplace, Vietnam or whatever, doing a job making people money, lining their pocketbooks. This man, Zachary Taylor, spent his whole life serving you, serving America. He earned three Gold Congressional Medal of Honors. Three in his life. He was born November the 24th, 1784. He died July the 9th, 1850. He was the 12th President of the United States. He was born into a prominent plantation-owning family in Virginia. But his family moved westward because their land was worn out. Many times when they plant one single crop, especially tobacco, it would just deplete the land of all minerals. He had no political history at all before he ran for President of the United States. He was a servant. He was a warrior. He was a soldier. He was the last president that was born before the adoption of the United States Constitution. He was called Old Rough and Ready because wherever they needed this man, whatever object, whatever protection of the United States or what we might call conquest of the United States, they called on him to do it. because they knew that he would be there and do the best job he could do with what he had. Taylor was kind of a middle-of-the-road man. He did not like the right and he did not like the left. He did not like the super conservatives and he did not like the liberals of society at that time. He tried to steer the middle ground. He figured it was the safest way to go and the most logical way, the most practical way. He was a soldier, not a politician. He was born on a plantation in Orange County, Virginia, as I said. to a prominent family of planters of English ancestry. His family were deep and steeped in what you might call American patriotism. They were American patriots. His birthplace could have been Hare Forest Farm, the home of his maternal grandfather, William Strother. He was the third of five surviving sons in his family. He had three younger sisters. His mother was Sarah Dabney Strother. Taylor. His father was Richard Taylor and had served as a lieutenant colonel in the American Revolution. These people were patriots. That's what he knew. That's how he was raised. He was raised to die for his country if need be because the country was more important than a single solitary person. Zachary Taylor saw men by the thousands laid their lives down for this country. And he knew what shedding blood and what the last heartbeat or the last breath of a soldier would be. He was a descendant of Elder William Brewster, a pilgrim leader in the Plymouth colony, a Mayflower immigrant and signer of the Mayflower contract. and Isaac Allerton, Jr., a colonial merchant, colonel and son of Mayflower pilgrim Isaac Allerton, and Fear Brewster. Taylor's second cousin through the line was James Madison, the fourth president of the United States. He was a member of the famous Lee family of Virginia, and a third cousin of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and by the way, he was a superintendent of West Point. Lee's wife, Robert E. Lee's wife, was a descendant of George Washington's wife. His family finally had to forsake their exhausted Virginia land and go westward, as I said before, to Louisville, Kentucky on the Ohio River. Taylor then grew up in a small woodland cabin until his family increased in prosperity. They moved into a brick home. The rapid growth of Louisville, Kentucky spurred on the prosperity of the Taylor family and his father finally acquired 10,000 acres throughout Kentucky as well as 26 slaves to cultivate the most developed portion of his holdings. Zachary Taylor's education was somewhat sporadic because Kentucky didn't have much of an education system at that time. His mother taught him how to read and write. My grandmother taught me how to read and write before I ever went to school. Later he attended a school operated by Elisha Ayer, a teacher originally from Connecticut. He then attended a school in Middleton, Kentucky, an academy run by Keane O'Hara, who had a classical trained education and was a scholar from Ireland. The father of Theodora O'Hara. Ayer later recalled that Taylor was a patient and a quick learner. All of his early letters in his correspondence show that he did not have a real good grasp of spelling or grammar. And his handwriting was somewhat difficult to read. But, it did, his grammar and spelling improved, but his handwriting was not the same. In June 1810, Zachary Taylor married Margaret McCall Smith. or Peggy Smith. She came from a family of Maryland planters. She was the daughter of Major Walter Smith, who had served in the Revolutionary War. A family of heroes. Zachary and his wife had six children. Reading through my notes here. Sarah Knox, or Knoxie Taylor, 1814 to 1835. By the way, Sarah, or Knoxie, married Jefferson Davis, which would become the future President of the Confederate States of America in 1835. Octavia Pannell Taylor, 1816 to 1820, died in early childhood. Margaret Smith Taylor, 1819 to 1920, died in infancy, along with Octavia, when the family was stricken with a bilious fever. Mary Elizabeth Betty Taylor, 1824 to 1909, married William Wallace Smith Bliss in 1848, and he died in 1853. and she again married Philip Pendleton Dandridge in 1858. Then his son, Richard or Dick Scott Taylor, 1826 to 1879, and he became a Confederate Army general, and he would marry Louise Mary Merritt Bringer in 1851. In 1808, Zachary Taylor joined the United States Army, receiving a commission of first lieutenant of the Kentuckian 7th Infantry Regiment. Taylor spent much of his time in 1809 in dilapidated camps near New Orleans and nearby Bofus, in territory of Orleans. His commander was James Wilkinson. And the soldiers out in this, stationed out in this area, suffered greatly from disease and lack of supplies and lack of food. Taylor was given an extended leave to go back home and to recover. from his ailments. He was promoted to captain in November 1810. He was allowed to attend to some of his personal affairs for a while. And over the next several years, he began to purchase a great deal of bank stock in Louisville. And he also bought a plantation in Louisville. as well as Cypress Grove Plantation of Jefferson County, Mississippi Territory. These purchases included slaves that went with the land. He, at that time, owned over 200 slaves. In 1811, he was called to Indiana, or Indian Territory, where he controlled took control of Fort Knox after the commandant of that fort left and fled. And he was able to restore order to the garrison. And he was complimented and lauded by Governor William Henry Harrison. He was called to Washington temporarily to testify in the trial against the former Commandant. Taylor would successfully defend Fort Harrison in Indiana Territory from Indians attacked, led by Tecumseh. In 1820, or 1812 that is, he He represented the first land victory of war for American forces against Great Britain. And he received a brevet, a promotion to the rank of major. According to President Eisenhower, Zachary Taylor was the first person to ever be presented with a first brevet ever awarded in the American state's history. Later, he joined General Samuel Hopkins as an aide on two expeditions, first into Illinois Territory and the second to the Battle of Tippecanoe Battle Sites, where he was forced to retreat in the Battle of Wildcat Creek. Taylor moved his family to Fort Knox after violence had subsided in that area. In 1814, he was called, Ruffin Ready was called back into action under Brigadier General Benjamin Howard. Then Howard fell sick and he had to take his control. And he led a 430-man expedition into St. Louis up the Mississippi River in the Battle of Credit Island, where Taylor defeated the Indian forces there. but retreated after the Indians were joined by their British counterparts and allies. He built Fort Johnson, their present-day Wausau, Illinois. Upon Howard's death, Taylor was ordered to abandon the fort and retreat to St. Louis, and he was reduced to the rank of captain. when the war ended in 1815. He resigned from the Army, but he re-entered the Army one year later after gaining commission as Major. He was a commander of Fort Howard at Green Bay, Michigan Territory. Then he returned to Louisville with his family for a while. In 1819, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and dined with President James Monroe and General Andrew Jackson. Finally, in late 1821, Taylor took the 7th Infantry to Natchitoches, Louisiana, on the Red River. On orders from General Edmund P. Gaines, they set out to locate a new post more convenient to the Sabine River frontier. He established Fort Jessup near there. In November 1822, he was transferred to Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River frontier, where he remained until 1824. Now remember, this man is doing all of this away from his family He's serving America. This man is not lining his pockets with gold. He's risking his life and every one of his soldiers under his command knew him personally. He never asked anything of his soldiers that he did not do. He spent the next few years after 1824 on recruiting duty. In 1826, he was called to Washington, D.C. to work with the Army Committee on how to improve military organization in the United States of America. In the meantime, Taylor acquired his Louisiana plantation and decided to move his family to their new home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In 1828, he was called back to war again, rough and ready. commanding Fort Snelling in Michigan Territory, now Minnesota, on the northern Mississippi River for a year and then nearby Fort Crawford for another year, again away from his family. The man gave his life for this country. He was only president for 16 months, but he had given his life for this country. After a time on furlough, he spent expanding his land holdings Taylor was promoted to colonel of the 1st Infantry Regiment in 1832. Then the Black Hawk War was beginning in the West. Taylor campaigned under General Henry Atkinson. He would later defend against Black Hawk's forces throughout the summer. Finally, the end of the war in England, August 1832, signaled the final Indian resistance to United States or American expansionism. They finally gave up, so to speak, and gave up their ancestral lands. Now, not one bit of this was done with any conscious, what we might call, sympathy toward the Indian at all, and I am American Indian. My family went through all of this on the other side of the story. But, Zachary Taylor was doing the wishes of his government. Many times he did not think that the government was doing the right thing, but he was under orders and he did his best with what he had. Always. He always tried to advance the opportunities for the American states. During this same period of time, Zachary Taylor proposed the courtship of his 17-year-old daughter, Sarah, to Jefferson Davis, which would be the future president of the Confederate States of America. He was First Lieutenant Jefferson Davis at that time of the American forces. Now the only reason why Zachary Taylor opposed the wedding of his daughter, the one they called Noxie, was because he knew how horrible it was on the wife of a soldier, a military man. And he didn't want his daughter to have to go through it twice, with him and now with her husband. He respected Davis greatly because he was a great man. But he didn't wish for his daughter to be a military wife. Simple as that. Well, they got married when she was 21. And she died three months later by contracting malaria when Davis visited her sister in St. Francisville, Louisiana. You have to realize that was a malarial swamp. In 1837, in the Second Seminole War, Taylor was directed to Florida. Now, here is where Taylor has what we might call a very dark reputation of what he did there. Now, Andrew Jackson and some of the other presidents that we had in the past all took part in the breeding and training of bloodhounds and bulldog crosses that they sent down into Florida, because that was the Okefenokee Swamp and all that down through there was almost impenetrable. And they would send these dogs down there as killing machines. They were trained to kill blacks and Indians. And they did this. This is history. But some of the Indians befriended the dogs and sent them back on the white people. Now, this is all history. This is what happened. They were doing the best they could to subdue these rebels. But the rebel Indians, the Seminole Indians, were a crossbreed of Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, or whatever, Creek Indians and Blacks. The Blacks would escape and go down and live with the Indians in those swamplands of Florida. And the Indians would go down there and they had farms. They had plantations and they had plenty of wildlife down there that they could eat. All they wanted to be done is just leave us alone. You took all of our lands, leave us alone. We're down here in this unlivable land, just let us live. But the United States government didn't want to do that. Now, by the way, the war may have basically ended at this time, but the Seminole Indians were never conquered. Never. The Seminole, remember, were Indian Mongrels, like I am. I'm Cherokee, Chickasaw, Brule Lakota, Santee Dakota, Ojibwe, mixed up, because all of us were pushed into Indian territory and they crossbred there. Finally, after Relief was finally granted to Taylor. He spent a whole comfortable year touring the nation with his family, meeting with other military leaders. During that period of time, he began to be interested in politics a little bit, but I said he tried to take the middle road. One thing he wanted to do was preserve the Union at all costs. preserve the Union at all costs. He wasn't going to go to the slavers and he wasn't going to go to the abolitionist side totally. He believed slavery should end someday. But he did not want slavery put in any part of new acquired territory in the Mexican-American War. He was made commander of the 2nd and corresponded with William Henry Harrison. He was made the commander of the 2nd Department of Army's Western Division in 1841, which ran all the way from Mississippi River westward, south of the 37th Parallel, and he was stationed in Arkansas. Zachary Taylor enjoyed several uneventful years of being in battle. Much of that time he spent on trying to make a living on land speculation and of course still his military matters. During the Mexican-American War, James Polk had sent him down there. They sent him down there with well-trained men to begin with. But he told Polk to only go so far. He was going to get Winfield Scott to win all the lot, you know. That was his buddy. And Zachary Taylor, he didn't really care for him too much, but Zachary Taylor was the best soldier in the Army, period. The greatest leader. Taylor, or Polk was looking for a way to get into the Mexican War because he wanted to take California, he wanted to take Arizona, New Mexico, and of course they took Texas as a state, all from Mexico. When they allowed Mexico to come in and become part of the United States, Mexico would not honor that. And they did not want to honor the Rio Grande River as the boundary point. Polk was just looking for a reason to get in there and take all of this land and to gain it all for the United States of America. It was kind of a poor excuse for war, but what he did, if you live in California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, all of these states during there, and even Oregon, Polk took it. for, to build up the forces of America so America would be a formidable enemy of anybody in the world. In other words, America could defend herself against all comers. And that's what they wanted to do. They wanted to make America a sovereign nation that would not have to answer to Spain or France or Germany or Russia or anyone. And wanted to protect the American borders from other colonizers of any kind, Russia, whatever. Taylor had a non-political reputation down in Mexico, and he was on pretty friendly relationship with Andrew Jackson. Now when Pope was down in Mexico, Winfield Scott was there also in this Mexican-American War. After crossing the Rio Grande in September, Taylor inflicted heavy casualties upon the Mexicans at the Battle of Monterey. He captured that city in three days. despite the impregnable reputation that the city had. Taylor was criticized for siding a truce with them at that time rather than having a full-scale unconditional surrender. had hoped that the occupation of northern Mexico would induce the Mexicans to sail out of California into Mexico. But the Mexicans were not willing to do that. They were willing, they wanted to fight. Polk sent an army under the command of Winfield Scott to besiege Veracruz. And when he did that, he took Taylor's best men with him. And Taylor was a greater, much greater military leader than Scott was. Now, in the meantime, Santa Ana learns. Santa Ana, by the way, America took Santa Ana out of Cuba and put him back in leadership of Mexico. Now he stabbed Polk in the back. And now he's gonna go after Zachary Taylor because he's got much less forces. He's got a greatly inferior set of forces than Santa Ana does. So Santa Ana goes to attack Zachary Taylor, and that was a big mistake. Zachary Taylor's smaller force destroyed Santa Ana's forces. Every man And Zachary Taylor's command knew their commander. And he knew them. And they fought to their death, last breaths. In recognition of Zachary Taylor's victory at Buena Vista, on July 4, 1847, Taylor was elected an honorary member of the New York Society of Cincinnati. the Virginia branch of which included his father as a charter member. He was added to the Aztec Club of 1847, the Military Society of Mexican War. Taylor received three congressional gold medals for his service, which no one had done before in the Mexican-American War, and remains the only person to have received these three gold medals. Taylor whipped the socks off of all the Mexican Army from city to city, from fort to fort. He remained in Monterey until late November 1847 when he set sail for home. From that time on, his active military career was effectively over. He received an absolute hero's welcome when he got home. which absolutely set the stage for his presidential election. Ulysses S. Grant, future president and the great general in the Civil War, was under Taylor in the Mexican-American War. Now, Taylor did what he was supposed to do. He did what he was told to do. So did Ulysses S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant said, that Polk had perpetrated a war against Mexico that was absolutely uninitiated by them. And he said he thought that the Civil War in America was God's just reward for what America did in Mexico. But the Mexican War would actually be the greatest benefit to the American government, even though you might call it morally wrong. And people today say, well, that's the reason why we got so much border problems and everything else, because of what they did back then, what Pope did back then. Well, I'm going to tell you something. From coast to coast, from the north to the south, extremities of America, not one bit of it was anybody's but American Indians. It was all Native American land. When France came here, when Britain came here, when Spain came here, they ignored, totally, the inhabitants of the land. And the inhabitants of this land would feed the world with potatoes and tomatoes and squash and beans and corn. They had genetically developed all of these crops that Europe did not have, nor the Middle East or any place. They were developed here by these so-called savages, ignorant savages, which were of the five civilized tribes, many of them. That's where you get your food. They were great. America was civilized and America was inhabited in 1491. And when Columbus came, he brought disease. By the year of 1493, there was 150 million people on North, Meso, and South America continent. And 150 years later, over 100 million had died from disease. The Great Plains had been created. Buffalo were driven. All of the forests and everything were all burned off every year. When the Anglo-Saxon world came to America and the East Coast, they saw lights from cities all up and down the coast, and absolutely manicured orchards and farms. America took America from the Native American people. They were more Native American Indian slaves than there ever were black slaves or anything else. While the Chinese were used as slaves here basically, American Indians were sold as slaves as late as 1869, four years after the Civil War in the state of California in Los Angeles. The plantations all the way from San Diego to the Oregon border were all slave plantations that went on until the early and mid-1900s with American Indians as slaves. Santa Ana had attacked Taylor with 20,000 men at Buena Vista in 1847. Taylor whipped him. This man was a great American hero and a man that gave his whole life for the American future. I've said in the past in some of these, how do you judge a president? Why did a man become president? Did he become president to serve his country? or to amass himself with wealth because of it. We know George Washington didn't do that, Thomas Jefferson didn't do that, and neither did Zachary Taylor do that. Ulysses S. Grant said, a better army man, man for man, probably never faced an enemy that was more greatly commanded by General Taylor in the Mexican-American War. He's the greatest. Man for man, he was the greatest leader in the Mexican-American War. Man for man, he was the greatest leader in the American-Indian Wars. Grant said General Taylor was not an officer to trouble the administration, the government, much with his demands. but he was inclined to do the best that he could with the means given to him. He felt that his responsibility as going no further, if he had thought that he was sent to perform an impossibility with a means given to him, he'd do it anyway. He would probably have informed the authorities of his opinion, but when they made a decision, he went on with what he was supposed to do. he would have gone on and done the best he could with what he had. Without parading his grievance before the public, no soldier could face either danger or responsibility more calmly than he did. These are qualities more rarely found than genius or physical courage. General Terrier never made any great show or parade, either in uniform or ready-new. In dress, he was possibly too plain, rarely wearing anything in the field to indicate he had a rank at all. And even as an officer, but he was known to every soldier in his command, and he was respected by each and every one to the last man. Taylor had never publicly revealed his political beliefs before 1848. Nor had he ever voted. He had never voted. He was too busy fighting wars and defending America. He believed in a strong, sound banking system for our country, but he said that he would never expand or rebuild the Bank of the United States. He said it was absolutely impractical to expand slavery into any of the Western areas that the United States had acquired in the Mexican-American War. He said the cotton and sugar crops that were grown in the South would not be expanded into the West because they depended on slave labor. He was a nationalist. A nationalist is a patriot. Due to his experience in all the wars that he'd fought in, and as a result of seeing what war does to individuals, and holding their hands, and seeing their last heartbeat, and hearing their last breath, and seeing their eyes close in death, he had a great feel of responsibility to what he was doing and where he was going as President of the United States. The northerners and southerners, neither one of them trusted Zachary Taylor too much. He believed in a low tariff, but a tariff only to support the states, not to gouge, not to prevent commerce. He said he believed the president should play no role in making laws. That was up to the Congress and the Senate. He did not support slavery in any of the other states or expansion into new territory. He said that he would not support abolishing slavery in the southern states at the time. He wanted to unite the United States, not to divide it. We have a so-called president today that all he does is divide the country with racism, when racism is not even the issue. He'll always holler race. He would have really brought on the Civil War real fast, wouldn't he? This man tried to prevent the Civil War. In February 1848, Taylor said he wouldn't accept the party of either presidential nomination. Finally, he accepted the Whigs party as his party, even though he would not really follow the ideals of the Whig party. They finally, in a convention, chose Millard Fillmore to run with him as Vice President. Choosing Fillmore was largely an attempt to reconcile the Northern Whigs, who were furious at the nomination of a slave-owning Southerner. And all factions of the parties were all upset. But he was the only man that could win. Taylor absolutely ignored the Whig platform. He was indifferent to their Whig platforms and the Whig policies that they considered vital. Vital. Publicly, he did not like to answer any questions about what he believed, but privately, He said that he was not going to rebuild the Bank of the United States. He was going to keep tariffs as low as possible, etc. Taylor, after he was elected president, he kept his distance from Washington. He didn't want patriotism. He believed, he didn't like politicians. Politicians were a bunch of pantywaists sitting back making laws and declaring wars. that they wouldn't fight or stand out in front of a bullet at all. He decides the patronage and political games of the politicians in Washington, D.C. He carefully and deliberately kept quiet about his decisions, and he quietly and deliberately and very precisely set his cabinet balanced cabinet, not leaning toward the Whigs, not leaning toward the Democrats. He got a man under his confidence called Clayton, and Crittenden had done a lot for him, but Crittenden had just been elected governor and he wasn't going to leave his Clayton helped Taylor choose six remaining members of his cabinet. And he tried to balance out his cabinet so it would not divide the nation. He wasn't going to do anything that would set either party on fire. Don't we wish that Biden would take and read a little bit about this history, a little bit about it, instead of trying to set a nation on fire. Finally, in January, Taylor began his trek to Washington, D.C. He was Just like he was when he was leading the forces. He didn't put on all of his uniform and everything and all his medals all shiny. He went to Washington as a common man to do a job. He believed that we should not entangle ourselves with demanding alliances with other nations. When he became president, in the first weeks of his presidency, he attended a lot of funerals. One for James Polk, and another for Dolly Madison, which he coined the phrase, the First Lady. She was America's First Lady. Then he went on a tour of Northeastern United States to familiarize himself of the needs of every area. because he took with great gravity the job that was set before him. He was plagued with gastrointestinal problems all during this time. While he was a southern slave owner, that is true, he believed that slavery was economically infeasible in any of the Mexican cessation of lands. Nor would he advise them to go crooks in those areas. He tried to have a balance between the abolitionists and the Southern powers to be. He saw the California gold rush and he tried to keep balance and timing in the nation. The Texas-Mexico border was not settled in his time, but he tried to set limits on it. He also was what we might call troubled with the Mormon problem. The Mormon problem. In all of this, we have Utah and we have Nevada and Idaho, which Mormons are trying to claim as another nation. Did you know that? The Mormons were trying to claim these areas as another nation. Joseph Smith and then later Brigham Young had the militias. Of course out here, it was Brigham Young that had the militia. And he was a commandant. of all the militia of the Mormon armies. So, around with all of this, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Idaho problem with the Mormons was a problem with Mexico settling the borders and Texas and New Mexico. Taylor would not be inaugurated on Sunday. He said that was a religious holiday and he wasn't going to be inaugurated, so he was inaugurated on the next day. And finally, when he made his inaugural speech, the State of the Union, he kind of recapped the events that America had gone through and the adjustments that America would have to make between states, and that all of these nations, little nations or states within the United States, should have personal, what we might call, states' rights. And that no state should try to infringe upon another state's rights. He's trying to balance the people in the United States and prevent a civil war. He was troubled with the problem of Cuba, which America had tried to buy from Spain. The Compromise of 1850 which was in the books, in the works at the time, would never go across Taylor's desk. July the 4th in 1850, there was a great celebration in Washington. And it was a fundraising for the event at the Washington Monument. President Taylor had been out in the war zone, in fighting with troops, and lived off of rations a lot of his life. Many, most of his life, he had lived on Army rations. And they said he just absolutely embellished himself with cherries and strawberries and all kinds of things on this day, and also ice cream. And that he afterwards became very ill. They didn't believe he was going to live. He had a fever. They were bleeding him to death. Some people believe that the North had poisoned him. with arsenic, and some people believe that the Southerners had poisoned him with arsenic during these festivals. He was receiving with EpiCac, Colomel, opium, and quinine at 2.6 gram doses. He was bled and blistered also. Every one of these things were harming him. He was medicated to death. He was exhumed later on because many people believed that he had been poisoned by one side or the other. His body was exhumed. He was x-rayed and everything else they could do. And they thought maybe that he had contacted a type of cholera, intestinal, what they call cholera morbus. Or Asiatic cholera. But, the tests that he did on arsenic and mercury, et cetera, the poisons that he could have been poisoned with, had to sneeze. couldn't do anything but sneeze. That all of these things that they were giving him and the tests that they did on his stomach and his hair tissue and etc. were fouled up. Today, we don't know whether he died of cholera or whether he died of poisoning. On July the 8th, Taylor remarked or talked to a medical examiner in attendance. He said, I should not be surprised if this were to terminate in my death. I did not expect to encounter what has beset me since my elevation to the presidency. God knows that I have endeavored to fulfill what I conceived to be in my honest duty. My honest duty. It wasn't his advancement in lining his pockets with gold. This was a service that he, another service that he was doing for his country. He said, but if I have been mistaken, my motives have been misconstrued and my feelings most grossly outraged. Taylor died at 10.35 p.m. On July 9, 1850, he was 65 years old. And at least 55 years of that life was spent in the service of the United States of America. Fillmore, as soon as he attained the office of President, signed in the Compromise of 1850, which President Zachary Taylor had tried to do during his time. This man is an American hero. This man is one of the men that gave his whole life service to the country. During this last year, they have gone and they've taken down statues of these great men and thrown them in the rivers, destroyed them. These are the men that built America that you have today. They gave their lives. This man gave his whole life in service. A humble man. A man that's faced death many, many times. A man that watched his men die many times. And he knew the cost of being a patriot. And he knew the cost of being American. Our Father, we send this message out, remembering what Romans the 13th chapter said, that you have established these governments, and hopefully this government was founded under God, and hopefully it will still stand for a few more years, and help us to glorify you in it, and help us to glorify you in our lives, and even in the life of this country,