Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was the 12th president of the United States, serving 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. Taylor had the third-shortest presidential term 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".[1]
Zachary Taylor was born on November 24, 1784,[2] 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.[3] Another possibility, one recognized by a historical marker, is Montebello, another Orange County estate.[4] 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.[5][6]
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.[7] He was also a member of the famous Lee family of Virginia, and a third cousin once removed of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.[8]
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.[9] Louisville's rapid growth was a boon for Taylor's father, who by the start of the 19th century had acquired 10,000 acres (40 km2) 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.[10]
Taylor's mother taught him to read and write,[11] and he later attended a school operated by Elisha Ayer, a teacher originally from Connecticut.[10] 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.[12] Ayer recalled Taylor as a patient and quick learner, but his early letters showed a weak grasp of spelling and grammar,[13][14] as well as poor handwriting. All improved over time, but his handwriting remained difficult to read.[13][14]
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:
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, D.C., 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]
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
![Sarah [Knox] Taylor](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Sarah_Knox_Taylor.jpg/1280px-Sarah_Knox_Taylor.jpg)
