created and edited by
Blake Linton Wilfong
a.k.a. The Wondersmith!
Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), an American statesman, twelfth president of the United States. He was born in Orange County, Va., but was taken in infancy by his father, Col. Richard Taylor, a Revolutionary veteran, to Kentucky, where he remained on his father's plantation until 1808, when he was appointed first lieutenant in the Seventh Infantry of the United States army. In 1810 he was made a captain and assigned to duty on the frontier. In 1812, with a force of less than 50 men, he defended Fort Harrison against a large force of Indians, led by Tecumseh. His success was one of the first marked military achievements of the war with England. In 1814 he was promoted to the position of major, and for many years he discharged the duties of Indian agent in the West. He served in the Black Hawk War in 1832, and becoming colonel, he was appointed to a command against the Seminole Indians in Florida. There, in 1837, he won the Battle of Okeechobee. For this he was brevetted brigadier general and was made commander in chief in Florida. In 1840 he purchased a cotton plantation at Baton Rouge, La.
In March, 1845, the United States
congress passed a resolution for the annexation of Texas, then an independent
republic. Texas claimed as its western boundary the Rio Grande river; the
Mexicans insisted that the territory under dispute belonged to them and
organized an army to reconquer the same. Taylor was ordered with a force of
4,000 men to occupy the town of Corpus Christi and to watch the frontier. In
March, 1846, he moved his troops across the disputed territory and constructed a
fort, which he named Fort Brown, opposite to the Mexican town of Matamoras. The
Mexican commander, General Ampudia, demanded that Taylor should withdraw his
troops pending negotiations. This was refused and General Arista, second in
command under Ampudia, crossed the Rio Grande with 6,000 men. On May 8, 1846,
General Taylor met Arista at Palo Alto, and defeated him with great loss, and
after this fight Arista was again defeated at Resaca and driven across the Rio
Grande. There had been much opposition, especially in New England, to anything
which looked like an aggressive war against Mexico, but President Polk sent a
message to congress, stating that war existed by the act of Mexico, and calling
for 50,000 volunteers to invade that country. Taylor was made major-general of
the army and instructed to make direct for the capital of Mexico. On September
9, 1846, with 6,000 men, he attacked the city of Monterey, which was defended by
about 10,000 Mexican troops, and after a siege of ten days and three days of
hard fighting the city was surrendered. At this point General Winfield Scott,
commander-in-chief of the United States army, withdrew a large portion of
Taylor's troops, leaving him with not more than 5,000 men under his command.
Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, advanced against Taylor with an army of
over 20,000 men. The forces met at Buena Vista, where, after a desperate
struggle, Taylor succeeded in completely annihilating the enemy.
Although the war was decidedly unpopular, excepting in the South, it secured the thanks of congress, a gold medal, and the nomination for the presidency for the victorious general. Such men as Clay, Webster, and even General Scott himself, were passed over, and General Taylor, whose nickname was "Old Rough and Ready", who was a slaveholder, who was ignorant to the last degree, and who had not voted for 40 years, received the nomination and was triumphantly elected, defeating Cass, the Democrat, and Martin Van Buren, the "Free Soil" candidate. On his accession to office, March, 1849, President Taylor found a Democratic majority in congress, and a dozen important questions, such as the admission of the new state of California, the settlement of the boundaries of Texas, and the organization of the new territory acquired from Mexico, confronting him. The turmoil of politics was too much for the old soldier, and on July 4, 1850, sixteen months after his inauguration as president, Taylor was stricken down by an illness which terminated his life five days later. He was succeeded in the presidency by Millard Fillmore. His son, Richard Taylor, was an officer in the Confederate army, and one of his daughters was the wife of Jefferson Davis.