When I think of Zachary Taylor, I can see a craggy face right out of a western– and for some reason, I think of cherries. (My adult brain has somehow managed to remember some 25+ years after reading a book of the presidents that his death was tied to gobbling down cherries and milk.) Zachary Taylor was not a politician by inclination or upbringing: he grew up in Kentucky, hearing about his father’s deeds in the American Revolution, and yearned to take his own place in the ranks. In frontier America, Army officers could divide their time between farming and serving in the small camps that dotted the borders between America and Indian country. This Taylor did, though he was always happier in service to the Army. He was involved in both the Black Hawk War and the fight against the Seminoles in Florida, and it was on his watch that hostilities began with Mexico. Taylor’s troops had been ordered to the disputed territory between ‘official’ America and Mexico, and the bellicose tête-à-tête was such that Mexican troops attacked Taylor’s in land that President Polk maintained was DC’s. It was in Mexico that Taylor’s victories against Santa Ana made him a war hero — and a political candidate who was elected despite not having any political experience or expressed political ideas at all.

This is an extremely short biography of a man whose term in office was cut short by a gastrointestinal issue, but it has the advantage of focusing on someone whose professional life was directly involved with two of the rachets up of sectional tension. Not only was Taylor famously involved in the war against Mexico that created pressure for more territories with the potential to disrupt the north-south balance, but it was during his tenure in office that gold rush California made its bid to join the Union tout de suite — as an anti-slave state. There was also a bit of an interstate war between Texas and New Mexico, where militias were mixing it up to press Texas’ claim to Santa Fe. Taylor would take a hard line against this Lone Star tomfoolery, but Texas would again invade New Mexico during the Civil War. Interestingly, his son would serve in the war on the Confederate side, and would unwittingly lead to future historians’ frustrations: Union troops burned Taylor’s son’s home, including all of the president’s papers. Taylor’s death was a genuine lost to the Union: given that he was a Southern Unionist, I wonder what might’ve happened had he been able to exert influence past 1850. Although this book is brief, it is one that offers some insight into how disruptive the Mexican war was, as well as amusing trivia like Taylor being the father-in-law of Jefferson Davis for all of three months, until the woman who united them — Sarah Knox Taylor — died of malaria.

Quotations

At a time when rogues abounded, Wilkinson was unique in the varieties of his villainy. Some officers were treacherous, some were avaricious, and some were simply incompetent. Wilkinson managed to combine all three.

Conditions at camp beggared description. More men were sick than well, and it was impossible to care for all their needs. Sanitation did not exist. Spoiled food, supplied by seedy and frequently corrupt contractors, revolted those who were supposed to eat it. Attempts at burial were pitiful. Interred higgledy-piggledy in shallow graves, the protruding arms and legs of the deceased took the place of missing markers in reminding the living of the fate that might be theirs.

“I am not a party candidate, and if elected, cannot be President of a party, but the President of the whole people.”

“The intense heat, for which Washington is famous, was exacerbated by the humidity. The fill-in soil that exists between the White House and the Potomac today did not exist in 1849, and the White House was close to the marshes at the edge of the river.”

With a straight face, he revealed an incredible blunder, his sending Andrew J. Donelson to Frankfurt am Main as the American minister to the German Empire, only to discover, on Donelson’s arrival, that the German Empire did not exist. Donelson had therefore sent the papers of the legation to Berlin, where the United States had a minister to Prussia.

On April 17, Benton finally lost patience with Foote’s attacks and, when the latter began his usual vituperation, rose and began approaching the Mississippian, who pulled a pistol and retreated down the aisle toward the front of the Senate chamber. Stopped once, Benton then saw the pistol. Rather than retreat, he thrust open his coat and continued in Foot’es direction. “I have no pistols,” he shouted. “Let him fire. Stand out of the way! Let the assassin fire!” Confusion broke loose, but several level-headed senators grasped both men and led them back to their seats.