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.
This article is about the president of the United States. For other people with the same name, see Zachary Taylor (disambiguation).
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
November 24, 1784
Barboursville, Virginia, U.S.
July 9, 1850 (aged 65)
Washington County, D.C., U.S.
- Richard Taylor (father)
Military officer
1808–1849
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".[1]
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—her father was Major Walter Smith, who had served in the Revolutionary War.[15][16] The couple had six children:
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.[9][25] 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.[26][27] Taylor spent much of 1809 in the dilapidated camps of New Orleans and nearby Terre aux Boeufs, in the Territory of Orleans. Under James Wilkinson's command, the soldiers at Terre aux Boeufs suffered greatly from disease and lack of supplies, and Taylor was given an extended leave, returning to Louisville to recover.[28]
Taylor was promoted to captain in November 1810. His army duties were limited at this time, and he attended to his personal finances. Over the next several years, he began to purchase a good deal of bank stock in Louisville.[29][30] He also bought a plantation in Louisville, as well as the Cypress Grove Plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi Territory. These acquisitions included slaves, rising in number to more than 200.[31][32]
In July 1811 he was called to the Indiana Territory, where he assumed control of Fort Knox after the commandant fled. In a few weeks, he was able to restore order in the garrison, for which he was lauded by Governor William Henry Harrison.[33][34] Taylor was temporarily called to Washington to testify for Wilkinson as a witness in a court-martial, and so did not take part in the November 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe against the forces of Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief.[35]
War of 1812
During the War of 1812, in which U.S. forces battled the British Empire and its Indian allies, Taylor defended Fort Harrison in Indiana Territory from an Indian attack commanded by Tecumseh. The September 1812 battle was the American forces' first land victory of the war, for which Taylor received wide praise, as well as a brevet (temporary) promotion to the rank of major. According to historian John Eisenhower, this was the first brevet awarded in U.S. history.[36] Later that year, Taylor joined General Samuel Hopkins as an aide on two expeditions—one into the Illinois Territory and one to the Tippecanoe battle site, where they were forced to retreat in the Battle of Wild Cat Creek.[37][38] Taylor moved his family to Fort Knox after the violence subsided.[39][40]
In the spring of 1814, Taylor was called back into action under Brigadier General Benjamin Howard, and after Howard fell sick, Taylor led a 430-man expedition from St. Louis, up the Mississippi River. In the Battle of Credit Island, Taylor defeated Indian forces, but retreated after the Indians were joined by their British allies.[41] That October he supervised the construction of Fort Johnson near present-day Warsaw, Illinois, the last toehold of the U.S. Army in the upper Mississippi River Valley. Upon Howard's death a few weeks later, Taylor was ordered to abandon the fort and retreat to St. Louis. Reduced to the rank of captain when the war ended in 1815, he resigned from the army. He reentered it a year later after gaining a commission as a major.[42][43]
Command of Fort Howard
Taylor commanded Fort Howard at the Green Bay, Michigan Territory settlement for two years, then returned to Louisville and his family. In April 1819 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and dined with President James Monroe and General Andrew Jackson.[44] In late 1820, Taylor took the 7th Infantry to Natchitoches, Louisiana, on the Red River. He subsequently established Fort Selden at the confluence of the Sulphur River and the Red River. On the orders of General Edmund P. Gaines, he later found a new post more convenient to the Sabine River frontier. By March 1822, Taylor had established Fort Jesup at the Shield's Spring site southwest of Natchitoches.[45]
That November (1822), Taylor was transferred to Baton Rouge[46] on the Mississippi River in Louisiana, where he remained until February 1824.[47][48] He spent the next few years on recruiting duty. In late 1826, he was called to Washington, D.C., for work on an Army committee to consolidate and improve military organization. In the meantime he acquired his first Louisiana plantation and decided to move with his family to a new home in Baton Rouge.[47][48]
Black Hawk War
In May 1828, Taylor was called back to action, commanding Fort Snelling in Michigan Territory (now Minnesota) on the Upper Mississippi River for a year, and then nearby Fort Crawford for a year. After some time on furlough, spent expanding his landholdings, Taylor was promoted to colonel of the 1st Infantry Regiment in April 1832, when the Black Hawk War was beginning in the West.[49][50] Taylor campaigned under General Henry Atkinson to pursue and later defend against Chief Black Hawk's forces throughout the summer. The end of the war in August 1832 signaled the final Indian resistance to U.S. expansion in the area.[51][52]
During this period, Taylor opposed the courtship of his 17-year-old daughter Sarah Knox Taylor with Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, the future President of the Confederate States of America. He respected Davis but did not wish his daughter to become a military wife, as he knew it was a hard life for families. Davis and Sarah Taylor married in June 1835 (when she was 21), but she died three months later of malaria contracted on a visit to Davis's sister's home in St. Francisville, Louisiana.[53][54]
Party
Because of his short tenure, Taylor is not considered to have strongly influenced the office of the presidency or the United States.[159] Some historians believe that he was too inexperienced with politics at a time when officials needed close ties with political operatives.[159] Despite his shortcomings, the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty affecting relations with Great Britain in Central America is "recognized as an important step in scaling down the nation's commitment to Manifest Destiny as a policy."[159] Historical rankings of presidents of the United States have generally placed Taylor in the bottom quarter.[1]
Taylor was the last president to own slaves while in office. He was the third of four Whig presidents,[h] the last being Fillmore, his successor. Taylor was also the second president to die in office, preceded by William Henry Harrison, who died while serving as president nine years earlier.[160]
In 1883, the Commonwealth of Kentucky placed a 50-foot monument topped by a life-sized statue of Taylor near his grave. By the 1920s, the Taylor family initiated the effort to turn the Taylor burial grounds into a national cemetery. The Commonwealth of Kentucky donated two adjacent parcels of land for the project, turning the half-acre Taylor family cemetery into 16 acres (65,000 m2). On May 5, 1926, the remains of Taylor and his wife (who died in 1852) were moved to the newly constructed Taylor mausoleum, made of limestone with a granite base and marble interior, nearby. The cemetery property was designated as the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery by Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis on March 12, 1928.[161]
The US Post Office released the first postage stamp issue honoring Taylor on June 21, 1875, 25 years after his death. In 1938, Taylor again appeared on a US postage stamp, this time the 12-cent Presidential Issue of 1938. His last appearance (to date, 2010) on a US postage stamp occurred in 1986, when he was honored on the AMERIPEX presidential issue. After Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln, Taylor was the fifth American president to appear on US postage.[162]
Taylor is the namesake of several entities and places around the nation, including:
Taylor was also the namesake of architect Zachary Taylor Davis.