Zachary Taylor (1784 - 1850) was an American army officer and the twelfth president of the United States, serving from March 1849 until his death in July 1850. [1] He spent forty years in the regular army, winning national fame as a commander in the Mexican-American War, and reached the White House without ever having held civil office. Though a slaveholder himself, he opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories, a stance that put him at odds with Southern leaders in the crisis that produced the Compromise of 1850. [2]
Early life
Taylor was born on 24 November 1784 in Barboursville, Orange County, Virginia, into a planter family with Revolutionary War connections. [1] The family moved soon afterwards to the frontier near Louisville, Kentucky, where he grew up on a plantation. His schooling was irregular, and his handwriting and spelling were criticised throughout his life.
He received a commission as a first lieutenant in the United States Army in 1808 and remained in the service for four decades.
Military career
Taylor first drew notice during the War of 1812 for his successful defence of Fort Harrison in Indiana Territory against a much larger attacking force. He served in the Black Hawk War of 1832 and then in Florida in the Second Seminole War, where his victory at Lake Okeechobee in 1837 brought promotion to brigadier general and the nickname Old Rough and Ready, earned by his indifference to uniform and his willingness to share the conditions of his troops. [3]
In 1845, as the dispute with Mexico over the Texas boundary sharpened, President James K. Polk ordered Taylor to occupy contested ground between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. Fighting began there in April 1846, and Taylor won victories at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma before capturing Monterrey in September.
His most famous action came in February 1847 at Buena Vista, where his outnumbered army, stripped of many of its regulars to reinforce Winfield Scott, held off a much larger Mexican force under Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. [4] The victory made Taylor a national figure and earned him the thanks of Congress and a gold medal.
Presidency
The Whig Party nominated Taylor for president in 1848 on the strength of his popularity and his lack of a political record; he had never voted in a presidential election. He defeated the Democrat Lewis Cass and the Free Soil candidate Martin Van Buren and took office on 5 March 1849. [2]
His presidency was dominated by the question of what to do with the territory won from Mexico. Taylor, though the owner of plantations and of enslaved people, proposed that California and New Mexico be admitted directly as states under constitutions of their own drafting, which in California's case meant admission as a free state. Southern leaders regarded this as a betrayal and threatened secession; Taylor replied that he would lead the army himself against anyone who took up arms against the Union. [3] He opposed the omnibus compromise bill assembled by Henry Clay.
Death
On 4 July 1850 Taylor attended a long ceremony at the site of the Washington Monument in intense heat and afterwards consumed cold milk and cherries. He fell ill with a severe digestive complaint and died on 9 July 1850. [1] Rumours that he had been poisoned persisted for well over a century; his remains were exhumed and tested in 1991, and the results did not support the arsenic theory.
Vice President Millard Fillmore succeeded him and supported the compromise measures Taylor had resisted, which passed later that year.
Legacy
Taylor's presidency was too short to leave a substantial legislative record, and historians usually rank him in the lower half of American presidents. [2] His resistance to the extension of slavery into the territories, unusual for a Southern slaveholder, and his blunt defence of the Union are the aspects most often noted. [4]
