you knew where zachary taylor stood. and i advanced a theory had zachary taylor not died 18 months into his presidency, food poisoning and, of course, one of the first conspiracy theories, did he die of natural causes? he insisted that california come into the union as a free state. and here is a southern slave owner, sugar plantation, baton rouge, louisiana. spent his entire life in the u.s. army. was the only national institution we had on the edge of civil war. and he's not going to let these people destroy his union. so we talk about richard nixon, only nixon could go to china because of the democrat had been to china, the conservative republicans would have attacked him like heck. but if nixon goes to china, well, then who can oppose it? well, if you have a southern plantation owner who's the war hero, the man who was the chief of staff during the mexican war double the size of the united states, and then, of course, with his death becomes the starting gun of will these new states come into the -- [inaudible] and th

she was the daughter of general zachary taylor. jeff met her when she was 17 or 18 years old. they fell in love. the taylors didn't want them to marry because they department want her to live the tough life of an army officer's wife on the western frontier. they corresponded. then two years later after they'd not seen each other for two yearses and only had written letters, davis resigned from the army so he could marry her. he took her home to mississippi and then to his sister's plantation, and there both fell ill from a particularly virulent form of malaria that had been brought to the south by slaves from africa more than two centuries before. strange, almost a kind of vengeance who had enslaved them. davis and knox were very sick, delirious, almost died. davis recovered enough to crawl from his bed when he heard knox singing in her delirium her favorite song. and as he went to her bed and held her in his arms, she died. and she was 21 years old, and they had been married for 12 weeks. he then went into what he called, i quote, my great seclusion, closed quote, where for se