Taylor, ZACHARY, a distinguished general and twelfth president of the United States, was born in Orange County, Virginia, 24th September 1784. His father had been a colonel in the war of independence, and removed to Kentucky in 1785, settling near Louisville. Here Zachary lived on a plantation until 1808, when he entered the army as lieutenant. In 1812 as captain he commanded Fort Harrison on the Wabash, and in September with only fifty men, two-thirds of whom were on the sick-list, successfully defended that post against a large body of Indians. After further service on the north-western frontier Taylor became major, but at the close of the war being reduced to a captaincy he resigned his commission. He was soon reinstated and again employed against the Indians, and in 1832 fought with Black Hawk, the noted chief of Illinois. In 1836 Taylor, now colonel, was ordered to Florida, where previous commanders had suffered in reputation from their vain attempts to subdue the troublesome Seminoles. Taylor had the good fortune to defeat the savages at Okeechobee Swamp on Christmas Day 1837, and thus won the brevet of brigadier-general. In 1840, being placed in command of the army in the southwest, he removed his family to a plantation at Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
When Texas was annexed in 1845 its western boundary was not defined, and Mexico still claimed the uninhabited district between the Rio Grande and the Nueces. Taylor, being ordered to defend Texas from invasion, sailed from New Orleans to Corpus Christi, where he gathered a force of 4000 regulars. Though well aware that President Polk wished him to occupy the disputed district, he would not cross the Nueces until express orders came in March 1846. He then marched to the Rio Grande and erected Fort Brown opposite the Mexican town of Matamoros. The Mexicans ordered him to retire, and upon his refusal crossed the Rio Grande to drive him out. Their action enabled President Polk to declare that the United States had been invaded, and to call for volunteers to repel the foe. But the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma on the 8th and 9th of May drove the Mexicans back, and Taylor following seized Matamoros. The volunteers did not come to his aid until September, when he marched to Monterey, and after a severe struggle captured it on the 24th. After seven weeks' vain waiting for more troops the march was resumed. The city of Victoria was occupied on December 29, but the line of communication was found too long for the meagre force, while Polk's Democratic administration, fearing the rising fame of Taylor, who was a Whig, crippled him by withholding reinforcements.
Taylor was already falling back to Monterey when his regulars were taken from him to form part of the new expedition under General Scott. Santa Anna, the ablest Mexican general, learning of Taylor's weakened condition, believed that with his 21,000 veterans he could crush the 5000 American volunteers. After a march of hundreds of miles, he overtook Taylor near the mountain-pass of Buena Vista. Availing himself of its natural advantages, Taylor on the 22d of February 1847 completely repulsed the Mexicans with a loss thrice as great as his own. In the following November General Taylor returned home and was received with enthusiastic expressions of popular favour. In June 1848 the convention of the Whig party, passing by its great political leaders, selected him as the candidate for the presidency. A few Free Soilers refused to support him as being a slaveholder, but his character, indicated by the sobriquet of 'Rough and Ready,' endeared him to the masses. He was triumphantly elected in November and inaugurated in the following March. The fierce struggle over the extension of slavery to the newly-acquired territory had begun. The congress was Democratic and opposed the admission of California as a free state, while the president favoured it. To avert the threatened danger to the Union Henry Clay introduced his famous compromise, which called forth a stormy discussion. Taylor remained firm and impartial, though his son-in-law Jefferson Davis was the leader of the extreme pro-slavery faction. Before a decision was reached in congress President Taylor died suddenly of bilious fever, 9th July 1850.
General Taylor was of medium height, stout and swarthy. He was plain in manners and speech, and careless in dress; he rarely wore uniform, and often sat sideways on his horse. His ability as a commander is shown by his unvarying success in battle, and is attested by General Grant, who served under him as lieutenant. Though Taylor had taken little part in political strife, he carried off the prize which great party leaders failed to win. As president he showed himself a true promoter of his country's welfare. There are Lives by Frost (1848), Fry and Conrad (1848), and O. O. Howard (1892).