I9607: William Edward CARMICHAEL (ABT 1900

Notes

Twelfth President of the United States. He was the first professional soldier to become President, having been elected because of his victories in the Mexican War. His presidency was brief (16 months) and his accomplishments few. He did, however, take a strong stand against Southern secession over the slavery question, though a Southerner and a landowner himself. Taylor was of English heritage and Whig political affiliation. He stood 5'8" tall and was an Episcopalian. His death came 9 July 1850 in the White House; he was buried in the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery near Louisville, KY.

Born in Virginia in 1784, he was taken as an infant to Kentucky and raised on a plantation. He was a career officer in the Army, but his talk was most often of cotton raising. His home was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and he owned a plantation in Mississippi.

"Old Rough and Ready's" homespun ways were political assets. His long military record would appeal to northerners; his ownership of 100 slaves would lure southern votes. He had not committed himself on troublesome issues. But Taylor did not defend slavery or southern sectionalism; 40 years in the Army made him a strong nationalist.

He spent a quarter of a century policing the frontiers against Indians. In the Mexican War he won major victories at Monterrey and Buena Vista.

In February 1850 President Taylor had held a stormy conference with southern leaders who threatened secession. He told them that if necessary to enforce the laws, he personally would lead the Army. Persons "taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang ... with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico." He never wavered.

Then events took an unexpected turn. Zachary Taylor spent July 4, 1850, eating cherries and milk at a ceremony at the Washington Monument. He got sick from the heat and died five days later, the second president to die in office.

After his death, the forces of compromise triumphed, but the war Taylor had been willing to face came 11 years later. In it, his only son Richard served as a general in the Confederate Army.

Zachary TAYLOR

BIRTH: 24 SEP 1784, Montebello, VA
DEATH: 9 JUL 1850, Washington, DC

REFERENCE: FTJ#24

Father: Richard TAYLOR
Mother: Sarah Dabney STROTHER

Family 1: Margaret Mackall SMITH

MARRIAGE: 21 JUN 1810, Jefferson Co. KY

1. Sarah Knox TAYLOR m. Jefferson F. Davis, Pres. of CSA.
2. Anne Margaret Mackhall TAYLOR
3. Octavia Pannel TAYLOR
4. Margaret Smith TAYLOR
5. Mary Elizabeth "Betty" TAYLOR
6. Richard TAYLOR

From C-Span American Presidents 531/99
A cheerleader type General who put himself on the front.
Very respected and loved by all his troops. Kind and benevolent to his slaves.

Taylor fought in Florida against the Seminole Wars.
He opposed the Mexican War & the annexation of Texas. He opposed the combined bill of the Compromise of 1850, but supported separate bills. He did not take sides on the Slavery Issue - Territories belonged to all states until accepted in the Union. The victory of the Mexican War resulted in Texas, California, Arizona & New Mexico as slavery issues revolving around the compromise and possible succession. Taylor was strong against succession, but would never have drawn his sword against the South. His approach to the South was to accept and settle for what we have.

His trusty steed, "Old Whitie" grazed on the White House lawn.

Originally buried in Washington, moved 3 mos later to his Family Tomb in Louisville, KY and moved again to a monument built by The Federal government 30 ft away from the original tomb (both can be seen at the cemetary and monuments). Now a National Cemetery, named Zachary Taylor National Cemetery with 13,000 burials.

In 1991 Descendants exhumed his body to determine if arsenic was present - Clara Rising, Historian Professor, wrote a book regarding the suspicions of arsenic posioning by a Dr. Miller who was on the medical staff of the White House and is also suspected of posioning Pres. Wm Henry Harrison, eight years before. The exhumation did not provide proof.

says Zachary Taylor had a child by a Slave Mulatto, named William Henry Taylor b abt 1835 in Baton Rouge, LA, who m. Elizabeth Trafford, Mar 16, 1872 and m. (1) Annie Hoare, 1868, Hamilton.

My William Henry Taylor. I have found the census for 1871 and he is listed as 36 in 1871 which would make him born in 1835. He was not settled in Hamilton until about 1848 during preperation for election.
His first wife Anne was 20 in 1871 and my Grandfather William Arthur Taylor was listed as 1 year old. As yet I have not found out when Anne died. We think about 1875 or so. And William Henry re Married to Miss Trafford. The family had about 13 kids but only 5 moved to Winnipeg, Canada.

William Henry was born some time around 1835 in Baton Rouge. Zackary had a home there right up untill he was elected president and also had a plantation on the Missasippi called Cypress Grove where he had slaves.
It was listed in his affairs. Zackary never sold any slaves and had many older slaves. He paid them a bonus at each harvest. Records indicate that he treated his slaves more as servants than slaves and did not have a runaway problem. On reference said that slavery at Cypress Grove was as idilike as it ever could be. His wife was not too happy with him during his time in the white house. His daughter performed most of the First Lady functions. Our family story suggests that after Richard was born she did not want further children. Zackary purchased William Henry's mother from New Orleans for personel duties. She was Milato and born in the Carrabean. Ill let you know if I find more. To my eye the family resemblance is very close.

thePROVINGground
The Mexican War gave future civil war generals their first taste of combat

JOHN C. WAUGH
Chatham Roberdeau Wheat would one day lead a famous Louisiana battalion called "Wheat's Tigers" into battle for the Confederacy. He would fight and die in the Battle of Gaines' Mill, Virginia, in 1862. But that was still some 15 years in the future; right now, the young law student's attention was directed toward adventure in another conflict, the Mexican War of the 1840s. There, whether he lived or died, he would be a winner, a hero. In his own florid fashion, he wrote: "I would ask for no greater glory--while our spirits should wing their flight to a brighter & a better world where we should enlist under the captaincy of Great Michael and mingle with the hosts of Heaven--and...with Washington & the heroes that have gone before, hang out our banners from the battlements of Heaven & let the shout of our exulting voices ring from arch to arch of heaven's bright canopy."

In the best case, of course, Wheat and his comrades would live, be victorious, enter the city of Mexico, and stand in the halls of the Montezumas "covered with glory & with bright stars upon our breasts...." In either case, he concluded, "we are victorious, victorious even in death--how sublime! How pleasing the thought!"

George Brinton McClellan, who would command the Union armies early in the Civil War, was a fire-new graduate of West Point when the Mexican War began. He couldn't wait to get to the front and fight "the crowd--musquitoes & Mexicans &c." "Hip! Hip! Hurrah!" he wrote home. "War at last sure enough! Aint it glorious!"

For young army officers of the time, the Mexican War was not only the road to glory, it was the road to promotion. Advancement in the peacetime army was maddeningly slow. An officer could stagnate in the same low grade year after year until those above him were promoted, resigned, or died, making room for his own advancement. When war came, everything speeded up. Armies expanded and fought, the unfortunate were killed, and the fortunate were promoted. Most young subalterns welcomed the war for that reason.

What they didn't know was that the war would be their rite of passage, their crucible, their proving ground. They would learn how to endure hardship, how to inspire the loyalty of troops, how to fight and win battles. In that reasonably tidy little foreign war of 1846-1848, they would be tempered for command in an incomprehensibly larger and messier domestic war to come: the American Civil War.

Compared to the Civil War, the Mexican War was small. Of the 17,000 or so Americans who became casualties during the conflict, only about 1,700 were killed in battle. The Union Army suffered a larger number of casualties in just three days of fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War. Despite this difference in scale, the Mexican War was by no means insignificant. It would add half a million square miles of territory to the United States, territory that would become the modern states of Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and part of Colorado. Indeed, it was the desire for westward expansion that sparked the war.

When the United States admitted the Republic of Texas as a state in December 1846, the Mexican government still considered Texas a rebellious Mexican province. Tension between the two countries prompted U.S. President James K. Polk to dispatch Brigadier General Zachary Taylor to Texas with a force of 3,000 men to "defend the Rio Grande."

Anti-American Mexicans viewed this as an act of war. Many Americans felt the same, seeing the move as a case of blatant aggression against a weaker nation, designed to satisfy the United States' lust for territory. Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was one of the most vocal critics of the war. Army Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant, who would eventually command all Union armies in the Civil War, called the conflict in Mexico "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."

Despite his reservations, Grant accompanied Taylor on his march across Texas in March 1846. On arriving at the Rio Grande, Taylor's troops built an earthen fort in a provocative position across the river from the Mexican city of Matamoros. The Mexican War could be said to have begun when Mexican artillery finally opened fire on the fort in May. When Grant heard the bombardment from his camp miles away, he later wrote, "I felt sorry that I had enlisted."

Others, like McClellan, were not yet in Mexico and were just as sorry to be missing the action. The Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, both American victories against larger Mexican forces, came within a week of the first bombardment. Taylor entered Matamoros on May 18 and in July pushed west on a campaign toward the city of Monterey. There, again, the Americans would be outnumbered by their Mexican foes.

Monterey was extraordinarily well fortified and surrounded by rugged terrain. The battle for the city would last three days and cost hundreds of American casualties.

On the third day of the battle, the Americans had taken control of Monterey's outskirts and began pressing in from all sides toward the grand plaza at its center, held by Mexican troops. An American head poked into one of the streets radiating out from the plaza would instantly summon a hail of artillery and musket fire, and snipers seemed to lurk on every roof. Lieutenant Grant, although officially acting as a regimental quartermaster, had managed to find his way to the firing line. When the unit he accompanied began to run out of ammunition, he volunteered to ride to Taylor's headquarters to plead for more.

One of the finest horseman ever to pass through West Point, Grant found a creative solution to the hazard of moving through Monterey's open streets. He swung to the side of his horse farthest from the enemy, leaving only one foot holding to the cantle of the saddle and one arm over the neck of the horse--Indian style. Shielded from stray bullets by his mount's body, Grant sped through the streets at such a furious clip that few of the city's defenders got off clean shots at him; both man and horse arrived at headquarters unharmed.

Thanks to that and similar instances of audacity, creative tactics, and good luck, the Americans were able to overcome Monterey. It was a resounding triumph for Taylor; news of the victory spread quickly north to the United States. To some eager young officers who had yet to reach the front, missing that battle seemed the ultimate tragedy of their military lives. McClellan was among those who arrived too late for the fight. It was "a piece of bad luck," he moaned, "which I shall regret as long as I live."

McClellan would soon see his share of action. Taylor's victories were producing no overtures of surrender from the Mexican government. Convinced that nothing less than a campaign against the national capital, Mexico City, would bring the war's end, President Polk sent Major General Winfield Scott, the army's senior commander, to organize a coastal invasion of central Mexico. For that operation, Scott requisitioned the cream of Taylor's force: most of his U.S. Army regulars and his cadre of West Point-trained officers. Taylor reluctantly acceded to Scott's order and remained at Monterey with a force consisting primarily of volunteers.

Taylor's volunteers would be tested in one last fight: the Battle of Buena Vista. There, Taylor was nearly routed by a larger Mexican army led by General Antonio L¢pez de Santa Anna. The swift and resolute action of troops from Indiana and Mississippi saved the day. The commander of the Mississippi volunteers was Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederacy.

Buena Vista was the end of the campaign in northern Mexico, but far from the end of the war. Taylor stayed in Monterey and later returned home, but Scott spent the winter preparing a sea-borne invasion of Mexico's greatest port, Vera Cruz. McClellan, meanwhile, was having the time of his young life. Around the campfires at night, he wrote his mother, "you never saw such a merry set as we are--no care, no trouble--we criticize the Generals--laugh & swear at the mustangs & volunteers...." Waking before dawn was common: "When on a march, we get up at 2 or 3, when we halt, we snooze it, till 8 or 9--when we have cigars we smoke them, when we have none, we go without--when we have brandy, we drink it, when we have not, we make it up by laughing at our predicament--that is the way we live."

The novelty of campaign life did little to ease the desire for battle, especially for one of McClellan's West Point classmates, a young artillery lieutenant named Thomas Jonathan Jackson. Jackson would become one of America's most famous generals, earning the nickname "Stonewall" during his service to the Confederacy. But in 1847 he had yet to hear a shot fired in anger. Walking on a beach in February with another future Confederate general, Lieutenant Daniel Harvey Hill, he said: "I really envy you men who have been in action. We who have just arrived look upon you as veterans." Then he added wistfully, "I should like to be in one battle."

Jackson would not have long to wait. Early in March, Scott landed his army of around 10,000 men on the beaches near Vera Cruz, along with a host of cannon. The walled city was nearly impervious to infantry attack, so Scott decided to shell it into submission. Jackson manned one of the batteries that began bombarding the city later that month. A cannonball came within five steps of sweeping him into oblivion, but he paid it no mind; he was doing what he most wanted--commanding guns in battle and attracting glittering acclaim for his coolness and judgment. One of his West Point classmates, Lieutenant William Montgomery Gardner, a future Confederate brigadier, saw him under fire for the first time and said "Old Jack" was "as calm in the midst of a hurricane of bullets as though he were on dress parade at West Point."

The success of the bombardment of Vera Cruz would depend not only on the skill of the artillerists, but also on the efforts of the engineers who oversaw the landing and placement of the guns. One of them was a 40-year-old captain named Robert E. Lee. Lee's only previous field service had been a brief stint with Taylor, but from the moment he joined Scott's staff in January 1847, he began to shoulder ever greater responsibility. His role in positioning guns for the siege of Vera Cruz could be seen as his first step up the ladder toward military fame and immortality. The bombardment brought the city's surrender in less than a week.

Scott consolidated his force at Vera Cruz and then began a march inland up the National Road toward Mexico City. This movement met its first resistance in mid-April near the town of Cerro Gordo. There, Santa Anna had entrenched his troops in strong positions along the only passable road through the mountains for miles. Scott saw that any frontal assault on Santa Anna's positions would be suicidal. He asked his engineers to find a route to the flank or rear of the Mexican position. A young lieutenant with the lyrical name of Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard thought he had spied such a route: he suspected the dense jungle and ravine-scarred landscape on the Mexicans' left could be penetrated. Like McClellan and Lee, Beauregard was an engineer, an officer who specialized in reconnaissance and in moving men and equipment through hostile terrain. And like Lee, he would later become one of the Confederacy's top generals.

Beauregard's speculation prompted Scott to send Lee, fast becoming the general's trusted right hand, to investigate. Gifted with a singular sense of direction and an unparalleled feeling for topography, Lee determined that Scott's army could indeed cut a path where Beauregard suspected and surprise Santa Anna's forces.

Scott did exactly that. While part of his force feinted against the Mexican front to draw Santa Anna's attention, the bulk of the American army crept through the dense underbrush and passed through deep ravines to reach the Mexican rear. There, in a classic surprise attack, they swept Mexican troops from poorly defended positions. Santa Anna's army broke and retreated toward Mexico City.

Scott settled into camp at the cities of Jalapa and Puebla to await reinforcements and, perhaps, peace overtures from the Mexican government. But he quickly ran into problems supplying his army from its base at Vera Cruz. The route between his inland bases and the coast was long and filled with Mexican guerrillas, and he could not spare enough troops to make sure his supply trains arrived safely. In the face of this quandary, Scott made a bold decision: he abandoned the lengthy supply line and consolidated his force at Puebla. His army would survive on whatever it could wrest from the Mexican countryside and its inhabitants.

To everyone's surprise, it worked. Mexico City made no request for peace negotiations, but Scott was able to maintain his army as an effective fighting force through the summer. And when reinforcements arrived, swelling his army to about 13,000 men, he decided to push farther inland.

South of Mexico City, the Americans again encountered defenders in overwhelmingly strong positions. Again Scott turned to his engineers, particularly Lee, to find an option other than a pointless frontal attack. Again Lee served him well. The rugged terrain in the area included the Pedregal, as pure an impassable piece of desolation as any army would ever see, a barren no-man's-land that looked as if a tumbling sea of molten lava had instantly congealed. It was fissured, pocked with caves, bristling with jagged outcroppings, and devoid of life. Santa Anna felt secure enough to leave the area only lightly guarded; there seemed no way to push a goat, let alone an army, through such a dead desert. But Lee found a way and led a team of workmen on an expedition to cut a path for Scott's army. The resulting Battle of Contreras, on August 20, was another American victory, and the Mexican army retreated north to nearby Churubusco.

There, another battle came on the same day as Contreras. Again, Santa Anna's troops held strong defensive positions. This time, though, there was no alternative to a frontal assault. Scott attacked from several directions at once. He did not pause to reconnoiter, instead relying on the momentum of his troops, who were pursuing fleeing Mexicans from Contreras.

The Battle of Churubusco lasted all afternoon and cost Scott more than 1,000 casualties, but again he triumphed, thanks to the bravery and skill of his soldiers. A number of young men distinguished themselves on the field at Churubusco, including Philip Kearny, a captain of dragoons who suffered wounds that cost him his left arm. He owed his survival to a lieutenant who bravely ensured his safe return to American lines. Kearny would later become a major general in the Union army during the Civil War. His rescuer, Richard Ewell, would achieve the rank of lieutenant general--and lose a leg--fighting for the Confederacy.

Scott had at last forced Santa Anna into Mexico City itself. Now, the city's defenses were all that stood between the Americans and victory. Early in September, Scott made his move. The linchpin of the city's defenses was Chapultepec, a towering hill surmounted by a fortified castle bearing the same name. After a costly preliminary fight at Molino Del Rey on September 8, Scott launched an attack on Chapultepec on the 13th. If he could carry the castle, he would control the ground in front of the final Mexican defenses at the city's gates.

One of the battalions attacking Chapultepec was led by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph E. Johnston. Beauregard, who witnessed the assault, later wrote that "the gallant Colonel Johnston" urged his men on "against as terrible a fire as I had yet seen!" The battalion was Johnston's first independent command; he would be brevetted to full colonel for his part in the battle and would eventually join Beauregard as one of the highest-ranking generals in the Confederacy.

Chapultepec would not fall without a fight. Lieutenant Jackson could attest to the passion of the castle's defenders; he was on the army's left when the assault began and soon found himself in a mess of trouble. In plain view of most of the army, Jackson was stuck in a ditch with his guns, under heavy cannon fire. Nearly all the horses in his battery had been killed or wounded, and his men had scattered for cover. His infantry support, except for a small escort that continued to try to hold its ground, had also disappeared.

Not only could Jackson himself not disappear under the circumstances, he didn't want to. He intended to return fire, if he could just get his guns over the ditch and aimed at the enemy. But he was working alone. He had lifted one gun over, but needed help to take it any farther. He strode up and down the shot-torn road, prodding and exhorting his cowering command. "There is no danger!" he lied, as a cannonball caromed between his legs. "See! I am not hit!"

His men stared back at him with justified skepticism. The rest of the army could hardly bear to watch. His commander sent an order to retire, but Jackson replied that it would be more dangerous now to withdraw than to stay. If the general would give him 50 veterans, he would attempt to capture the Mexican breastwork instead. Help finally did come, and Jackson got his gun into position and engaged the Mexican battery in a virtual muzzle-to-muzzle shootout. In time, thanks mainly to Jackson's sheer will, the enemy gun was overpowered and the breastwork stormed.

Jackson was not the only one to distinguish himself that day. Among the first men in the ditch guarding the castle was Lieutenant Lewis A. Armistead. A step behind him, bearing the colors, was Lieutenant James Longstreet. And beside him was the man who had finished dead last in Jackson and McClellan's West Point class, Lieutenant George E. Pickett. A musket ball struck Longstreet, but as he fell Pickett caught the colors and carried them heroically over the wall and into the castle. Last at West Point, Pickett was first at Chapultepec.

Little did these three young men suspect that 16 years later, on a hot July 3, 1863, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, their destinies would again intertwine. On that day Longstreet would command the Confederate corps that would make the most famous charge in American history. Directly under him, in command of the main division making the charge--and for whom the charge would be named--would be George Pickett. One of Pickett's brigadiers, destined to die there, would be Lewis Armistead.

Unlike Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, the charge at Chapultepec was a success. The Americans overran the castle in just over an hour, but Mexico City was not yet theirs. They had only made it possible to attack the last line of defense at the city's gates. As Jackson raced down the causeway toward the city with his artillery caisson, dying to administer the coup de grƒce, he was accompanied by Lieutenants D.H. Hill and Barnard Bee. All were urging Captain John Magruder, a hothead himself, to let them continue the assault. All four of these officers would one day be Confederate generals.

Two others in that category, Beauregard and Lieutenant Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox, were at that moment in deep trouble at the Belen Gate, at the southwest corner of the city. Both were finding it an "emphatically hot place"--so hot that nearly everyone there was wounded, including Beauregard. Wilcox, however, led a charmed life. A Mexican musket ball hammered into the side of the Colt revolver hanging on his left hip, spinning him around and dazing him. But he was unhurt, and when he picked up the musket ball that had struck his revolver, he found it flattened to the thickness of a silver dollar by the force of the impact. Clearly stamped on one side of this lead wafer was the name of the pistol's maker and the place where it was made. The same luck would follow Wilcox through the Civil War. At the Battle of White Oak Swamp, Virginia, in 1862, he would take half a dozen bullet holes through his clothing but emerge untouched. Indeed, he would pass through his four years of service to the Confederacy without a single serious injury.

North of the Belen Gate into Mexico City was the San Cosme Gate, where resistance to the invaders was equally spirited. Ulysses S. Grant, still nominally a regimental quartermaster, had again made his way to the front lines. As his comrades dodged Mexican bullets, Grant spied a church belfry that seemed to command the area behind the gate. He commandeered a mountain howitzer, ordered it hauled up into the belfry, and from there, less than 300 yards from the gate, dropped fire on a startled and confounded enemy with striking effect. The Americans controlled both gates before evening and prepared for a final push through the city on the following day. But Santa Anna evacuated overnight, and the next day city authorities surrendered. The war was all but over.

The Mexican War gave America's young crop of army officers a taste of glory and opportunity for advancement, but it also gave them a look at what war was really like. They didn't always like what they saw. After Mexico City fell, Jackson wrote his sister in Virginia that he had "seen sights that would melt the heart of the most inhuman of beings: my friends dying around me and my brave soldiers breathing their last on the bloody fields of battle, deprived of every human comfort, and even now I can hardly open my eyes after entering a hospital, the atmosphere of which is generally so vitiated as to make the healthy sick." Jackson was finding that while battle elated him, war did not.

Even as hawkish an officer as George McClellan lost some of his enthusiasm during the war. At Contreras he had two horses killed under him and was knocked flat when canister fire struck the hilt of his sword. By the war's end, when he was in Mexico City and still alive, he would say: "Here we are--the deed is done--I am glad no one can say 'poor Mac' over me."

When "the deed was done" and the participants looked back on the war, they all agreed it was an unparalleled military experience. Grant, who would one day have a few successes of his own on other fields, praised Scott and summed up the accomplishment this way: "He invaded a populous country, penetrating two hundred and sixty miles into the interior, with a force at no time equal to one-half of that opposed to him; he was without a base; the enemy was always intrenched, always on the defensive; yet he won every battle, he captured the capital, and conquered the government."

Although from the beginning of the war to the end of it some 100,000 men, regulars and volunteers, entered the American army, at no time did more than 14,000 fight in any one battle. Scott entered the valley of Mexico with only 9,000 troops and was not reinforced until after Mexico City had fallen. In every battle fought, the Mexicans were superior--often overwhelmingly so--in numbers of troops and small arms and in numbers and weight of artillery. They had a superior cavalry and fought gallantly. Yet, the Americans consistently defeated them. Why?

What the American army had that the Mexicans didn't was overwhelming superiority in military skill. The Mexicans were outgeneraled and outmaneuvered at the top. But even more important, they were outmanned in the middle by the solid core of young officers, West Pointers mostly, who formed the backbone of the army's officer corps.

The group of officers who earned the most voluminous praise were West Point engineers. Lieutenants McClellan and Beauregard and Captain Lee were among the bright engineering talent that shone like burnished steel throughout the war. Their ability literally shaped victories for General Winfield Scott along the National Road from Vera Cruz to Mexico City in the spring and summer of 1847. All would go on to command huge armies in the coming Civil War. Even in that group of luminaries, though, one officer shone more brightly than most: Robert E. Lee.

There was not a general in the American army in Mexico who didn't, between Vera Cruz and Mexico City, praise the work of this brilliant engineer at least once. Scott called Lee's two trips across the Pedregal near Contreras on the night of August 19 "the greatest feat of physical and moral courage performed by any individual, in my knowledge, pending the campaign." Lieutenant Ewell, who would one day command a corps in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, wrote in his account of that battle: "I really think one of the most talented men connected with this army is Capt. Lee, of the Engs. By his daring reconnaissances pushed up to the cannon's mouth, he has enabled Genl. Scott to fight his battles almost without leaving his tent."

A decade after the war, Scott was still aglow over Lee, describing him in an official letter as "the very best soldier that I ever saw in the field." When the Civil War was just beginning in April 1861, Scott was the aged, overweight, and immobile general-in-chief of the U.S. Army. He still thought enough of Lee's abilities that he suggested the colonel for command of the entire Federal force then being assembled to put down the rebellion. Lee refused--he could not take up arms against his people in seceding Virginia--but the offer was a signal honor.

Lee may have been the star of Scott's campaign, but he was by no means alone in earning the commanding general's praise. Scott gave credit generally to his young West Point-trained officers. At Contreras, he exclaimed to Beauregard, "If West Point had only produced the Corps of Engineers, the Country ought to be proud of that institution." Later, at a dinner in Mexico City, he said that but for the science of the military academy "this army, multiplied by four, could not have entered the capital of Mexico."

After the war Scott said flatly: "I give it as my fixed opinion that but for our graduated cadets the war between the United States and Mexico might, and probably would, have lasted some four or five years, with, in its first half, more defeats than victories falling to our share; whereas in less than two campaigns we conquered a great country and a peace without the loss of a single battle or skirmish."

The same officer corps that earned such overwhelming praise in the Mexican War would rise to the highest commands of the Civil War. Of course, not every great Civil War general learned to lead armies from the experience in Mexico. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the unschooled military genius who rose from private to lieutenant general of cavalry in the Confederacy, was never in Mexico. William T. Sherman spent the Mexican War on garrison duty in California, a thousand miles from the heart of the action. Philip Sheridan was part of an entire generation of great Civil War commanders who were too young for the Mexican War. But for many of the generals who rose to highest command in the Union and Confederate armies, the Mexican War was their war college, their main preparation for command in the Civil War. Lee, Grant, Jackson, McClellan, Beauregard, Longstreet, Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, George Gordon Meade, Edmund Kirby Smith, George H. Thomas, Braxton Bragg, Joseph Hooker, and dozens of others all learned to make war in Mexico.

Not all of them would apply what they learned equally well, and some would forget the lessons altogether in the heat of combat, but Mexico would influence the way they fought nearly every battle in the Civil War. So it is a fair question: what exactly did the Mexican War teach them that they then fell back on in the 1860s, when suddenly they found themselves fighting one another?

To begin with, they had good teachers in Generals Taylor and Scott. The two men were cut from entirely different cloth, but both offered important role models for their young subordinates. Taylor was the soldier's general. He often came up short on tactics and he lacked skill in the logistics of war, but when his men called him "Old Rough and Ready," they meant it as a compliment. He was somebody to have confidence in. He shared every hardship in the field with his troops and demonstrated an astonishing personal courage.

A reporter with Taylor's army wrote in the Cincinnati Chronicle in early 1847, "Gen. Taylor has gained more influence over his army than any other general, save Napoleon, that ever lived. There is not a man of them, I suppose, who ever thinks of any thing else than success, when Taylor leads them in battle. A certain conviction rests upon the mind of the soldier that old Rough and Ready cannot be whipped, and it nerves his arms and strengthens his heart to do and dare more than he could with any less feeling of confidence."

General Taylor never made any great show or parade, either of uniform or retinue. In dress he was possibly too plain, rarely wearing anything in the field to indicate his rank, or even that he was an officer; but he was known to every soldier in his army and was respected by all."

Taylor, Zachary (1784-1850) -- also known as "Old Rough and Ready" -- Second cousin once removed of Richard Henry Lee; second cousin of James Madison; third cousin of Henry Lee, Charles Lee and Richard Bland Lee; father-in-law of Jefferson Finis Davis; granduncle of Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr.; third cousin twice removed of Fitzhugh Lee; first cousin thrice removed of Elliot Woolfolk Major; second cousin thrice removed of Edgar Bailey Woolfolk; ancestor of Victor D. Crist. Born in Orange County, Va., November 24, 1784. Whig. Major in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812; colonel in the U.S. Army during the Black Hawk War; general in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War; President of the United States, 1849-50; died in office 1850. Episcopalian. Died, probably of gastroenteritis, in the White House, Washington, D.C., July 9, 1850. Original interment at Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D.C.; reinterment in private or family graveyard; reinterment in 1926 at Zachary Taylor National Cemetery, Louisville, Ky. Taylor counties in Fla., Ga., Iowa and Ky. are named for him. Books about Zachary Taylor: K. Jack Bauer, Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest.

Zachary Taylor

Zachary Taylor was born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1784. His father Richard (1744-1829) had been a colonel in the Continental Army during the War of Independence. Within a year, his father moved the family to Kentucky, where Zachary Taylor he was appointed a collector at the port of Louisville on the Ohio River. A tutor was hired to educate Zachary. In 1806 Zachary volunteered for the brief campaign ending Aaron Burr?s attempt to create an independent nation in the southwest. In 1808, with the influence of family friends, including James Madison, President Thomas Jefferson granted Zachary a commission as first lieutenant in the Seventh Infantry. Zachary married Margaret Smith in 1810. They had six children, three of whom survived him. A daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor, married Jefferson Davis in 1835 and shared his disgraced condition during and after the Civil War.

Zachary Taylor served in the War of 1812 and the campaign against Black Hawk in 1832. he served in President William Harrison's campaign to remove Indians from the southern states and the campaign against the Seminole Indians in the Everglades. He achieved the rank of brigadier general after the Battle of Lake Okeechobee. In 1841 he purchased a plantation in Mississippi. In 1845, when Texas gained its independence, Taylor and 3,000 men were ordered to Fort Brown at the mouth of the Rio Grande River to engage the Mexicans in border skirmished. In September he and his troops entered Mexico and captured the city of Monterrey. In 1847 they crossed the mountains and, though outnumbered, defeated Santa Anna?s army to gain control over northern Mexico. As a result of his accomplishments, Zachary Taylor acquired the nickname "Old Rough and Ready."

Taylor learned that the Secretary of War was trying to discredit him for political purposes. When a letter Taylor wrote critical of President Polk and the Secretary of War became public, he was rebuked by authorities in Washington. He attracted the attention of Washington politicians, newspaper editors and shrewd Whig politicians who were interested in promoting him as a political candidate. While he sympathized with the Whigs, he was not partisan, and in fact never voted. The Whig politicians knew that, as a plantation owner and slave holder in Mississippi, he would appeal to southerners. Zachary Taylor was nominated at the Whig convention in 1848 and, due to a split in the Democratic Party, won the election and was inaugurated in 1849.

Few presidents have entered office with less knowledge of what was expected of them. Through clever patronage the Whigs in Washington enlarged their influence. In 1849 Taylor reluctantly agreed to efforts to admit California to the Union as a free state. Mortified by scandals involving trusted cabinet members, he was determined to reorganize the cabinet. Unfortunately, while attending the opening ceremony for the construction of the Washington Monument on the fourth of July 1850, he consumed food spoiled by the noonday heat. He suffered acute gastroenteritis and died five days later.

When in the 1990s the body of Zachary Taylor was exhumed for legal reasons, to determine, once and for all, whether spoiled food or arsenic (intentional poisoning) caused his death, the judgment was conclusive: spoiled food.

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My Southern Family

William Edward CARMICHAEL

ABT 1900 - 1 Nov 1986

ID Number: I9607

Sources

Jasper Arthur CONEY

14 Jun 1888 - 19 Jan 1964

ID Number: I40059

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MARGARET "the Fair Maid of Galloway" DOUGLAS

ABT 1430 - ____

ID Number: I11534

Notes

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Henry Royal White EUBANK

1795 - ABT 1876

ID Number: I73888

Notes

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JOAN de HOO

ABT 1350 - 30 May 1394

ID Number: I96663

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Theodosia LEWIS

____ - ____

ID Number: I57967

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Daniel PERKINS (PURKINS)

ABT 1776 - 10 May 1795

ID Number: I48684

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Martha Jane SEALE

23 Jan 1803 - 15 Aug 1859

ID Number: I100395

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Hon. Zachary "Old Rough and Ready" TAYLOR 12th PRESIDENT

24 Sep 1784 - 9 Jul 1850

ID Number: I4240

Notes

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William White TOMPKINS

ABT 1810 - ____

ID Number: I50230

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