ZACHARY TAYLOR . 1849-1850

Northerners and southerners disputed whether territories wrested from Mexico should be opened to slavery, and some southerners threatened secession. Zachary Taylor was prepared to hold the Union together by armed force rather than by compromise.

Born in Barboursville, Virginia on November 24, 1784, he was raised on a Kentucky plantation. A career officer in the army, he made his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and owned a plantation in Mississippi. But Taylor did not defend slavery or southern sectionalism. 40 years in the army made him a firm nationalist. He had policed frontiers against Indians and had won major victories in the Mexican War.

"Old Rough and Ready's" homespun ways were political assets. His long military record would appeal to northerners; his ownership of 100 slaves would lure southern votes. He had not committed himself on troublesome issues. The Whigs nominated him to run against the Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, who favored letting the residents of territories decide for themselves whether they wanted slavery. In protest against Taylor and Cass, northerners who opposed extension of slavery into territories formed a Free Soil Party and nominated Martin Van Buren. In a close election, the Free Soilers pulled enough votes away from Cass to elect Taylor to the presidency.

Traditionally, people could decide whether they wanted slavery when they drew up new state constitutions. Therefore, to end the dispute over slavery in new areas, President Taylor urged New Mexico and California to draft constitutions and apply for statehood, bypassing the territorial stage. Southerners were furious, since neither state constitution was likely to permit slavery; Members of Congress were dismayed, since they felt the president was usurping their policy-making prerogatives. In addition, Taylor's solution ignored several acute side issues: the northern dislike of the slave market operating in the District of Columbia; and the southern demands for a more stringent fugitive slave law.

In early 1850 Taylor held a conference with southern leaders who threatened secession. He told them that those "taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang...with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico." He never wavered.

Then events took an unexpected turn. After participating in July 4 ceremonies at the Washington Monument, Taylor fell ill. Within five days he was dead. After his death, the forces of compromise triumphed, but the war Taylor had been willing to face came 11 years later. In it, his only son Richard served as a general in the Confederate Army.

MILLARD FILLMORE . 1850-1853

In his rise from a log cabin to the White House, Millard Fillmore proved that through methodical industry and some competence an uninspiring man could make the American dream come true.

Born in Summerhill, New York on January 7,1800, Fillmore worked on his father's farm. In 1823 he was admitted to the bar; seven years later he moved his law practice to Buffalo. Fillmore held state office and for eight years was a member of the House of Representatives. In 1848, while comptroller of New York, he was elected vice president.

He presided over the Senate during the months of debates over the Compromise of 1850. A few days before President Taylor's death, Fillmore intimated that if there should be a tie vote the bill, he would vote in favor of it. Thus his accession to the presidency in July 1850 brought an abrupt political shift in the administration. Taylor's cabinet resigned and President Fillmore appointed Daniel Webster as secretary of state, thus proclaiming his alliance with the moderate Whigs who favored the Compromise.

A bill to admit California aroused all the violent arguments over the extension of slavery. At this critical juncture, President Fillmore announced in favor of the Compromise. On August 6, 1850, he sent a message to Congress recommending that Texas be paid to abandon her claims to part of New Mexico. This helped influence many northern Whigs in Congress away from their insistence upon the Wilmot Proviso - the stipulation that all land gained by the Mexican War must be closed to slavery.

Stephen A Douglas of Illinois presented five separate bills to the Senate: 1) Admit California as a free state. 2) Settle the Texas boundary and compensate her. 3) Grant territorial status to New Mexico. 4) Place federal officers at the disposal of slaveholders seeking fugitives. 5) Abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

Each measure obtained a majority, and by September 20, President Fillmore had signed them into law. The more militant northern Whigs remained irreconcilable, refusing to forgive Fillmore for having signed the Fugitive Slave Act. They helped deprive him of the presidential nomination in 1852.

As the Whig Party disintegrated in the 1850's, Fillmore refused to join the Republican Party; but, instead, in 1856 accepted the nomination for president of the Know Nothing, or American, Party. Throughout the Civil War he opposed President Lincoln and during Reconstruction supported President Johnson. He died in 1874.

FRANKLIN PIERCE . 1853-1857

Franklin Pierce became president at a time of apparent tranquillity. The United States, by virtue of the Compromise of 1850, seemed to have weathered its sectional storm. Pierce, a New Englander, hoped to prevent still another outbreak of that storm. But his policies, far from preserving calm, hastened the disruption of the Union.

Born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, on November 23, 1804, Pierce attended Bowdoin College. He studied law, then entered politics. He became speaker of the New Hampshire legislature. In the 1830s he went to Washington, first as a representative, then as a senator. Pierce was proposed for the 1852 presidential nomination. At the Democratic Convention, the delegates agreed upon a platform pledging support of the Compromise of 1850 and hostility to any efforts to agitate the slavery question. They eliminated all the well-known candidates before nominating Pierce, a true "dark horse." He won with a narrow margin of popular votes. But with the sudden death of his only son, Pierce found little cause for celebration.

In his inaugural he proclaimed an era of peace and prosperity at home, and vigor in relations with other nations. Pierce had only to make gestures toward expansionism to excite the wrath of northerners, who accused him of acting as a cat's-paw of southerners eager to extend slavery into other areas. Therefore he aroused apprehension when he pressured Great Britain to relinquish its special interests along part of the Central American coast, and even more when he tried to persuade Spain to sell Cuba.

But the most violent renewal of the storm stemmed from the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and reopened the question of slavery in the West. This measure, the handiwork of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, grew in part out of his desire to promote a railroad from Chicago to California through Nebraska. Already, land that now compromises southern Arizona and New Mexico had been purchased for a southern transcontinental route. The proposal, to organize western territories through which a railroad might run, caused extreme trouble. Douglas provided in his bills that the residents of the new territories could decide the slavery question for themselves. The result was a rush into Kansas, as southerners and northerners vied for control of the territory. Shooting broke out, and "bleeding Kansas" became a prelude to the Civil War.

By the end of his administration, Pierce could claim "a peaceful condition of things in Kansas." But, to his disappointment, the Democrats refused to renominate him, turning to the less controversial Buchanan. Pierce returned to New Hampshire, leaving his successor to face the rising fury of the sectional whirlwind. He died in 1869.

JAMES BUCHANAN . 1857-1861

Tall, stately, stiffly formal in the high stock he wore around his jowls, James Buchanan was the only president who never married. Born in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania, on April 23,1791, Buchanan, a graduate of Dickinson College, was learned in the law. After being elected five times to the House of Representatives, he served for a decade in the Senate. He became Polk's secretary of state and Pierce's minister to Great Britain. Service abroad helped to bring Buchanan the Democratic nomination in 1856 because it had exempted him from involvement in bitter domestic controversies.

As president-elect, he thought the crisis would disappear if he maintained a sectional balance in his appointments and could persuade the people to accept constitutional law as the Supreme Court interpreted it. The Court was considering the legality of restricting slavery in the territories, and two justices hinted to Buchanan what the decision would be. Thus, in his inaugural the president referred to the territorial question as " a matter of but little practical importance" since the Court was about to settle it "speedily and finally."

Two days later the Court delivered the Dred Scott decision, asserting that Congress had no constitutional power to deprive persons of their property rights in slaves in the territories. Southerners were delighted, but the decision created a furor in the North.

When Republicans won a plurality in the House in 1858, every significant bill they passed fell before southern votes in the Senate or a presidential veto. The government reached a stalemate. Sectional strife rose to such a pitch in 1860 that the Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings, each nominating its own candidate for the presidency. When the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, it was a foregone conclusion that he would be elected even though his name appeared on no southern ballot. Rather than accept a Republican administration, the southern "fire-eaters" advocated secession. President Buchanan, dismayed and hesitant, denied the legal right of states to secede but held that the Federal Government legally could not prevent them. He hoped for compromise, but secessionist leaders did not want compromise.

Then Buchanan took a more militant tack. As several cabinet members resigned, he appointed northerners, and sent the Star of the West to carry reinforcements to Fort Sumter. On January 9, 1861, the vessel was fired upon and driven away.

Buchanan reverted to a policy of inactivity that continued until he left office. In March1861 he retired to his Pennsylvania home Wheatland - where he died seven years later - leaving his successor to resolve the frightful issue facing the nation.