The Last White House Slaves: The Story of Jane, President Zachary Taylor's Enslaved Concubine

The Last White House Slaves: The Story of Jane, President Zachary Taylor's Enslaved Concubine

In The Last White House Slaves, Walt Bachman relates the never-before-told story of how President Zachary Taylor fathered at least one child -- a son, William -- with his household slave Jane. In the decades before the Civil War, Taylor and hundreds of other U.S. Army officers became slavekeepers by manipulating the army's unique pay system, which rewarded them for keeping slaves as private servants. Relying on a previously uncited collection of thousands of army pay records stored in the National Archives, Bachman reveals how army officers, with the full knowledge of their superiors in Washington, helped spread slavery throughout the country. Taylor, a Mexican-American War hero who was elected president in 1848, took his slaves, including Jane, to forts in free territories, Mexican-American War outposts, and the White House. After he died in office in 1850, Jane continued to serve the Taylor family and was eventually freed by Lincoln's District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862.