There was in fact a conspiracy theory at the time that slaveowners infiltrated the White House staff (DC being in the South) and had Zachary Taylor poisoned Not because ZT was an abolitionist - he was, in fact, a slaveowner - but he was a "moderate" against expanding slaveryhttps://twitter.com/baddestmamajama/status/1236000599780388864 …
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It's not the kind of thing I'd put last them - Lincoln was slightly less "moderately" against slavery and their response to him was plunging the nation into war and then shooting him when they lost But it seems unlikely, they had his corpse tested for arsenic and everything
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Anyway he got his fatal chronic diarrhea from eating cherries *in milk* In an era before pasteurization and modern refrigeration, in notoriously hot, muggy DC, at a time when much of the city was an open sewer (Yes, I know, "you mean right now?", ha ha)
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So a nefarious explanation probably isn't actually necessary, since there was in fact a "stomach bug" that went around the city at the time and hit a lot of his colleagues too and he was just unlucky
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Anyway don't eat unwashed produce or raw milk (The fact that, thanks to organic hipster fads, this stopped being the kind of thing that could happen to a wealthy Washington politician and then started being one again is one of those fun things about history)
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