As a result, he won election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was preserving the Union, but he died sixteen months into his term, before making any progress on the status of slavery, which had been inflaming tensions in Congress. In June 1810, Taylor married Margaret Mackall Smith, whom he had met the previous autumn in Louisville. 'Peggy' Smith came from a prominent family of Maryland planters—she was the daughter of Major Walter Smith, who had served in the Revolutionary War. The couple had six children: Sarah Knox 'Knoxie' Taylor (1814–1835), married Jefferson Davis in 1835, a subordinate officer whom she had met through her father at the end of the Black Hawk War; she died at 21 of malaria in St. Francisville, Louisiana, three months after her marriage.
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