Zachary Taylor

Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was an American military leader who served as the 12th president of the United States from 1849 until his death in 1850. Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general and becoming a national hero for his victories in the Mexican–American War. As a result, he won election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was to preserve the Union. He died 16 months into his term from a stomach disease, thus having the third shortest presidency in U.S. history.

Taylor was born into a prominent family of plantation owners who moved westward from Virginia to Louisville, Kentucky, in his youth; he was the last president born before the adoption of the Constitution. He was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army in 1808 and made a name for himself as a captain in the War of 1812. He climbed the ranks of the military, establishing military forts along the Mississippi River and entering the Black Hawk War as a colonel in 1832. His success in the Second Seminole War attracted national attention and earned him the nickname "Old Rough and Ready".

In 1845, during the annexation of Texas, President James K. Polk dispatched Taylor to the Rio Grande in anticipation of a battle with Mexico over the disputed Texas–Mexico border. The Mexican–American War broke out in April 1846, and Taylor defeated Mexican troops commanded by General Mariano Arista at the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, driving Arista's troops out of Texas. Taylor then led his troops into Mexico, where they defeated Mexican troops commanded by Pedro de Ampudia at the Battle of Monterrey. Defying orders, Taylor led his troops further south and, despite being severely outnumbered, dealt a crushing blow to Mexican forces under General Antonio López de Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista. Taylor's troops were transferred to the command of Major General Winfield Scott, but Taylor retained his popularity.

The Whig Party convinced a reluctant Taylor to lead its ticket in the 1848 presidential election, despite his unclear political tenets and lack of interest in politics. At the 1848 Whig National Convention, Taylor defeated Winfield Scott and former Senator Henry Clay for the party's nomination. He won the general election alongside New York politician Millard Fillmore, defeating Democratic Party nominees Lewis Cass and William Orlando Butler, as well as a third-party effort led by former president Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams Sr. of the Free Soil Party. Taylor became the first president to be elected without having previously held political office. As president, he kept his distance from Congress and his Cabinet, even though partisan tensions threatened to divide the Union. Debate over the status of slavery in the Mexican Cession dominated the national political agenda and led to threats of secession from Southerners. Despite being a Southerner and a slaveholder himself, Taylor did not push for the expansion of slavery, and sought sectional harmony above all other concerns. To avoid the issue of slavery, he urged settlers in New Mexico and California to bypass the territorial stage and draft constitutions for statehood, setting the stage for the Compromise of 1850.

Taylor died suddenly of a stomach disease on July 9, 1850, with his administration having accomplished little aside from the ratification of the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty and having made no progress on the most divisive issue in Congress and the nation: slavery. Vice President Fillmore assumed the presidency and served the remainder of his term. Historians and scholars have ranked Taylor in the bottom quartile of U.S. presidents, owing in part to his short term of office (16 months), though he has been described as "more a forgettable president than a failed one".

Early life

Zachary Taylor was born on November 24, 1784, on a plantation in Orange County, Virginia, to a prominent family of planters of English ancestry. His birthplace may have been Hare Forest Farm, the home of his maternal grandfather William Strother, but this is uncertain. He was the third of five surviving sons in his family (a sixth died in infancy) and had three younger sisters. His mother was Sarah Dabney (Strother) Taylor. His father, Richard Taylor, served as a lieutenant colonel in the American Revolution.

Taylor was a descendant of Elder William Brewster, a Pilgrim leader of the Plymouth Colony, a ''Mayflower'' immigrant, and a signer of the Mayflower Compact; and Isaac Allerton Jr., a colonial merchant, colonel, and son of ''Mayflower'' Pilgrim Isaac Allerton and Fear Brewster. Taylor's second cousin through that line was James Madison, the fourth president. He was also a member of the famous Lee family of Virginia, and a third cousin once removed of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

His family forsook its exhausted Virginia land, joined the westward migration and settled near future Louisville, Kentucky, on the Ohio River. Taylor grew up in a small woodland cabin until, with increased prosperity, his family moved to a brick house. As a child, he lived in a battleground of the American Indian Wars, later claiming that he had seen Native Americans abduct and scalp his classmates while they were walking down the road together. Louisville's rapid growth was a boon for Taylor's father, who by the start of the 19th century had acquired throughout Kentucky, as well as 26 slaves to cultivate the most developed portion of his holdings. Taylor's formal education was sporadic because Kentucky's education system was just taking shape during his formative years.

Taylor's mother taught him to read and write, and he later attended a school operated by Elisha Ayer, a teacher originally from Connecticut. He also attended a Middletown, Kentucky, academy run by Kean O'Hara, a classically trained scholar from Ireland and the father of Theodore O'Hara. Ayer recalled Taylor as a patient and quick learner, but his early letters showed a weak grasp of spelling and grammar, as well as poor handwriting. All improved over time, but his handwriting remained difficult to read.

Marriage and family

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:
* Ann Mackall Taylor (1811–1875), married Robert C. Wood, a U.S. Army surgeon at Fort Snelling, in 1829. Their son John Taylor Wood served in the U.S. Navy and the Confederate Navy. President Taylor's two great-grandsons were:
** Zachary Taylor Wood, acting Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police and Commissioner of Yukon Territory.
** Charles Carroll Wood, Lieutenant with the British Army.
* Sarah Knox "Knoxie" Taylor (1814–1835), married Jefferson Davis in 1835, a subordinate officer 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.
* Octavia Pannell Taylor (1816–1820), died in early childhood.
* Margaret Smith Taylor (1819–1820), died in infancy along with Octavia when the Taylor family was stricken with a "bilious fever."
* Mary Elizabeth "Betty" Taylor (1824–1909), married William Wallace Smith Bliss in 1848 (he died in 1853); married Philip Pendleton Dandridge in 1858.
* Richard Taylor (1826–1879), a Confederate Army general; married Louise Marie Myrthe Bringier in 1851.

File:Margaret Taylor.jpg, Margaret Smith Taylor
File:Sarah Knox Taylor.jpg, Sarah noxTaylor
File:Richard Taylor.jpg, Richard Taylor

Military career

Initial commissions

On May 3, 1808, Taylor joined the U.S. Army, receiving a commission from President Thomas Jefferson as a first lieutenant of the Kentuckian Seventh Infantry Regiment. He was among the new officers Congress commissioned in response to the ''Chesapeake–Leopard'' affair, in which the crew of a British Royal Navy warship had boarded a United States Navy frigate, sparking calls for war. Taylor spent much of 1809 in the dilapidated camps of New Orleans