What was the primary reason Zachary Taylor carried southern states?

Answer 1

The slavery issue helped Taylor in South. Taylor was a life-long Southerner and owned a plantation in Louisiana and used hundreds of slaves . He kept quiet about his feeling on slavery, so even though the Whigs were not known as being for slavery, people in the South preferred Taylor over the Democrat, Lewis Cass from Ohio. Another factor was a third party candidate, ex-President Martin Van Buren, who ran on an anti-slavery platform which favored the Wilmont Proviso, which outlawed slavery in the new territory obtained from Mexico. Cass opposed this proviso, but favored letting the people of the new territories vote on whether to allow slavery. Thus Cass worried the South but was not strong enough against slavery to win over Van Buren supporters. Van Buren won enough votes in New York to tip the state to Taylor.