Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesmen of the Old Southwest

Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesmen of the Old Southwest by K. Jack Bauer was my pick for the book about the 12th US President, and second to die in office.

Zachary Taylor was born November 24, 1784 at Montebello Plantation in Virginia. This was not owned by the Taylor family but rather a family friend. Taylor’s father Richard had been granted 1,000 acres in Kentucky outside of Louisville and he had gone ahead to prepare the land and house for his very pregnant wife Sara, and so she had stayed behind with family friends, ultimately giving birth to Zachary while there.

At this time in history, Kentucky is a rapidly growing state, and during Taylor’s childhood, Louisville grew rapidly from a frontier outpost to a full city that was well known for it’s whiskey distillery’s and tobacco crops.

Taylor was the third son born to Richard and Sara, and he had two older brothers, which meant both of them were more in line for inheritance than Zachary was. So lacking other prospects and following in his father’s footsteps, Zachary looked for a military career. He had no interest in college, and jumped right into the military. Now, while he did not want college, and was not expected to inherit much, Richard Taylor did use some of his money to purchase young Zacharay a commission as 1st Lieutenant of the 7th Infantry on May 3, 1808 with a pay of $30 per month and two meals per day. Which was decent for the time.

Taylor was a competent military leader, not necessarily brilliant, but competent, and most of his success in the military can be traced back to common sense. So if he arrived at an outpost and saw the men kind of lazing about in disarray, he’d put them to work, getting the barracks in order, getting daily drills going, organizing the post. This earned him a reputation for competence, which put him in a good position when Fort Harrison was attacked by Tecumseh in 1812.

Now, Taylor had missed the Battle of Tippecanoe when he was called to testify before Congress on behalf of James Wilkinson, who at that time was believed to have been a Spanish Spy. Not the topic of this book, but Wilkinson was TOTALLY a Spanish Spy. Who was found not guilty of BEING a Spanish Spy. Partly due to Taylor’s testimony. Good job 12th Congress of the United States. Good catch….

So Taylor spent two years in charge of Fort Howard in Michigan territory before being sent to the Southwestern portion of the United States, which at this time was like Louisiana, the eastern part of Texas, Missouri, Arkansas—that was Southwest US in the early 1800’s. So this is where Taylor was sent and he was there to establish a new outpost, which was Fort Jessup, before being transferred to Baton Rouge, where he spent two years.

Throughout all of this, Taylor is acquiring land and stocks. So that by the time he marries his wife Margaret “Peggy” Mackel Smith on June 10, 1810, his father gifted him 300 acres from the family plantation in Kentucky, which Taylor used to launch himself as a landowner and capitalist. He began investing and farming. And one of the things he learned very well was when and where to delegate, and he had a knack for picking the right person to delegate to. And so, his landholdings were prosperous. Because he just knew who the right guy for the job was.

And while he was consistently worried about money and resented the brevet rank system that would grant a man the position and authority, but not the pay to which he was working, when he died, Taylor was quite wealthy by the standards of the day, being worth about $200,000 in 1850’s money, about $3 million in 1983 currency, which is when this book was written. Taylor was frequently a beneficiary of brevet ranking, so he got all of the headaches, but none of the pay. Wonder why he resented this? It was the government’s way of cheating a soldier out of pay while getting extra duty out of him.

In May 1828, Taylor is called back to Michigan territory and placed in charge of Fort Snelling, and he is promoted to full Colonel (not brevet) of the 1st infantry regiment in April 1832, just in time for the Blackhawk War in the west. In just four short months, Taylor’s competency in command had essentially won the war, chasing Chief Blackhawk and his followers, crushing them, and ensuring American expansion westward across the Dakota territories.

During this time, Taylor’s youngest daughter, who was the apple of his eye, Sarah “Knox” Taylor, married future president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis. Unfortunately, she died three months later; however, Davis became one of the family during this time, and was present when Taylor died many years in the future.

Following his success with the Blackhawk War, Taylor was sent to Florida in 1837 for the second Seminole War. By this time the Trail of Tears was well under way, and the Seminoles are resisting relocation with all their might. And they had a lot of might. Because they had literally lived in Florida for centuries before the advent of white men on these shores, so they had a definite homefield advantage during the war. The Seminoles fought an effective guerilla warfare campaign against the US Government. Until Taylor gets there. When he arrives, he builds Forts Gardner and Bassinger and implements his squares plan. This was to build and maintain an outpost every twenty miles, basically forming a grid over Florida, and made hiding in the swamps more difficult for the Seminoles.  It also ensured settlers were within easy reach of military assistance should the Seminoles attack.

Following his time in Florida, Taylor asked for and was granted a leave of absence for one year, during which time he visited his several landholdings, which included the original 300 acres in Kentucky, and several plantations in Louisiana. And yes, this included a visit to his slaves. He was a southern man, he definitely owned slaves. He did not inherit any slaves, he purchased them himself or had his agents do so on his behalf.

This is kind of one of the odder things about him. He considered himself a Jeffersonian politically, but he never voted in an election, which seems like an odd thing for a future president, but he was not really political overall, other than to identify as Jeffersonian. His commission was granted by Jefferson and so drew to that political bent. Including Jeffersons belief that slavery as an institution was evil. Which makes it weird that, while viewing the institution of slavery as evil, Taylor then proceeded to buy slaves himself. I do not understand this about our 12th President.

He did, however, seem to embrace that old school, southern paternalism, when it came to his slaves, and did everything he could to ensure their well-being, including medical care when sick, and a portion of protein with their meals, as well as having dedicated vegetable patches to grow their own gardens. Taylor is one of the people that those who aggrandize the old south will point to and say “see, not all slave owners were bad” while ignoring the evil of slavery itself.

I mean…free clothes, free food, free housing, free healthcare…slaves had all these things that are socialist pipe dreams. But they didn’t have freedom. So there’s some food for thought. You pick your poison. I’ll take freedom and self-responsibility any day.

When 1844 rolls around. President Tyler is working diligently on annexing Texas, and in anticipation of the annexation, Taylor is sent to Fort Jessup in Louisiana, and that’s where he’s set to wait until the annexation is completed. Polk is sworn in in 1845, and Taylor is man on the ground when Polk needs someone to secure our southern border at the Rio Grande. Rio Grande is where Taylor is when Mexico takes offense to this sudden movement of US Forces, kicking off the Mexican/American War in May 1845.

Polk is inconsistent in his orders and directives, and as this is all before the advent of telegraph wires that far West, Taylor has to lead as best he can, knowing he is probably pissing off his boss, the President back east. Taylor has been promoted to full General. Capable, but again not brilliant. General Scott, who was also on scene but not the ranking general, was arguably more brilliant. But rank matters, Taylor was over Scott, and so Taylor led the charge and war.

However, Taylor had something Scott did not have: The love of his men. Taylor’s men LOVED him and would follow him anywhere. Because they knew that Taylor loved them back and would do everything he could to not squander their lives. During the Seminole Wars, Taylor had earned the nickname Old Rough and Ready for his willingness to share the conditions with his men, never holding himself above simply due to his higher rank. He was competent and common sense, but he also held his men’s lives as precious and not to be wasted.

So Taylor commanded forces at the Rio Grande and the battles at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, defeating Mexican forces each time, but not following through on a route. If the enemy starts fleeing, protocol was to chase them down and ensure the victory. Taylor did not do this, believing his job was to secure America’s southern border, not invade Mexico. At least, this is my understanding of his motives, this is not explicitly stated in the book. Ultimately, Taylor did not invade Mexico until specifically ordered to do so by President Polk, pushing through to Monterey, where American forces were outnumbered three to one. And despite these odds, Taylor still won.

After the battle, Taylor had a hard time enforcing discipline on the troops. Especially the Texas militia, who were still smarting over the loss of the Alamo a decade earlier, and kept attacking the locals. By November 1847, the war was effectively over, at least for Taylor, when he was recalled to Baton Rouge, and his name starts being bandied about as a possible 1848 presidential candidate for the Whig party. Taylor did not seem to want this at all. He never voted, he disliked politics, and was pretty sure the country was moving away from Jeffersonian politics. I think he was the first and last president to not want the office.

In the 19th century, mail was always sent postage due. So, if you didn’t want to receive mail, you simply told the post office not to forward any mail that was sent postage due, and the USPS would then throw the letter on the dead letter pile. And this is where notification of Taylor’s nomination to presidency sat. Because Taylor didn’t want any mail. So, it sat there for a month, waiting for Taylor to accept or decline the nomination.  He didn’t know he was the nominee until somebody showed up on his doorstep and asked if he was going to accept the nomination. At which point he went to the Post Office, picked up his nomination letter, and accepted publicly. He then refused to campaign. Because he really didn’t want the position. So, the Whigs had to campaign for him.

November 7, 1848, Taylor and running mate Millard Fillmore are elected to the White House. Taylor resigns his commission to the US Army, effective February 28, 1849. President Polk accepted his resignation, effective January 31, 1849. And Polk did not leave any indication as to why he accepted the resignation 30 days early. Taylor was sworn in on March 4, 1849, becoming our 12th president.

Taylor, having spent his entire career in the military, immediately set out choosing cabinet members that would offset his own executive deficiencies, that he could delegate work to, especially the problem of Patronage, which he found abhorrently distasteful. And fortunately, so did members of his cabinet. At least one resigned or refused a cabinet position because he didn’t want to deal with patronage requests.

Taylor’s first year in office was spent dealing with several funerals, including former President Polk, who died two months after Taylor took office. And former First Lady Dolley Madison. In fact, I believe Taylor was the one to coin the phrase First Lady, which is how the wife of the president has been addressed ever since.

And the matter of dissolution of the Union was the primary call of the day, and that was increasingly more likely. In true keeping with his Jeffersonian principles, Taylor refused to extend slavery to any new territories, leaving it up to the territories themselves to decide if they wanted to allow the institution to be part of their borders.

California, which was rapidly preparing it’s own petition for statehood, decided emphatically no, it did not want slavery. The Mormons, who had taken over the Utah territory, wanted to maintain a sovereign nation within the borders of the United States, between the Sierra Nevada’s and the Rocky Mountains, all the way north to the Canadian border, leaving themselves an access route to the Pacific Ocean through California. Now, that was a weird dream. I mean, we rolled in, stole the entire continent from the indigenous tribes, and the Mormon’s think we’re just gonna gift them a third of it for funsies?

But by and large, Taylor’s first year in office was pretty uneventful. He was a hands-off president, he trusted Congress to do their job, which was a little naïve. Because he was a political neophyte, he did not have a line in to Congress to keep up to speed on what they were planning on passing, which meant they passed bills without any input from the executive branch. And Taylor was not kept up to speed on what debates were occurring in Congress. So the ongoing debate of slavery and abolitionism was the defining issue of the day, going on to July 4, 1850, when Taylor attended a series of orations at the Washington Monument, then under construction.

He drank ice water and chilled milk and ate cherries before walking home. Now, all of these things had been advised to be avoided because of the potential outbreak of cholera. But he did not avoid them, and following the festivities on that Fourth of July, Taylor became quite ill, and doctors were called in, while Taylor became steadily sicker, dying on July 9, 1850. His last words were “I have always done my duty. I am ready to die. My only regret is the friends I leave behind me.”  Which is pretty solid for a dying declaration.

Taylor was the second sitting president to die in office, and it was cholera he died of, that is confirmed from a postmortem autopsy…I mean, 140 years after the fact, but an autopsy was done, confirming manner of death was consistent with cholera.

I think Taylor was a capable administrator, which is really all we need in a President. If not brilliant himself, he was brilliantly adept at picking the right man for the job. Which is a form of brilliance often unremarked upon. Shortly before his death he had reconfigured his cabinet and assembled a team of truly brilliant statesmen and politicians, consisting of Edward Stanley as Secretary of War, John Bell as Attorney General, Hamilton Fish as Secretary of Treasury, and John Crittendon as Secretary of State. And these four were powerhouses in their day, highly capable in the roles they had been assigned to, and one wonders what brilliance they would have accomplished had the cabinet as assembled been allowed to continue under Taylor successor, Millard Fillmore.

Overall, this book was ok. I don’t blame the author for the OK ranking here, I think he did the best possible job he could have with the information available at the time of writing. And what I mean by that is, usually when writing about a president, the author depends on primary documents. Letters to and from to flesh out the character of the man. And this has not been a problem to date because, as you might imagine, the US tends to track and keep all these documents compiled. Well, when the Civil War happened, Taylor’s plantations were ransacked and burned, including all his letters and journals. So, there is a crying dearth of information about the man. So, a lot of what was written in this book is conjecture, drawn from things contemporaries had to say about Taylor. Some good, some bad, but none of them are how the man himself thought about any one issue.

The author was meticulous in detailing this, but again, no primary sources exist to support that. I still regret the burning of the library at Alexandria…and now I regret the burning of Taylor’s plantations, and all the knowledge of this president that was lost in the process.

This book was initially reviewed on YouTube on March 27, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.