Happy Birthday Old Rough and Ready
On this day November 24th in 1784 (227 years ago today) Zachary Taylor, the 12th President of the United States, was born on a farm in Orange County, Virginia, to a prominent family of planters of English ancestry. His father, Richard Taylor, had served as a lieutenant colonel in the American Revolution. His second cousin was James Madison. Taylor was the last President to hold slaves while in office, and the second and also last Whig to win a presidential election.
Known as "Old Rough and Ready," Taylor had a forty-year military career in the United States Army. He served in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, and the Second Seminole War. He achieved his greatest military fame during the Mexican-American War leading American troops to victory in the Battle of Palo Alto and the Battle of Monterrey despite being out-numbered. He was criticized by President James K. Polk for not ensuring the Mexican army that surrendered at Monterrey disbanded, although Polk's criticism of Taylor was likely motivated by political jealousy. Polk, a Democrat, was concerned about Taylor's popularity and rumours that the Whigs would run Taylor for President in the next election. Polk ordered that half of Taylor's army was to join General Winfield Scott's soldiers as they besieged Veracruz. When Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna discovered that Taylor had only 6,000 men, many of whom were not regular army soldiers, Santa Anna attacked Taylor with 20,000 men at the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847. The American forces suffered 672 casualties, but the Mexican losses were nearly triple that and as a result, Santa Anna left the field of battle. Buena Vista turned Taylor into a hero, and he was compared to George Washington and Andrew Jackson in the American press.
As a General, Taylor was very informal. Stories have been told about his informal dress, the tattered straw hat he wore, and the casual way he always sat on top of his horse, "Old Whitey," while shots buzzed around his head. When an army courier looking for General Taylor mistook him for an insignificant old man, Taylor is reported to have had the courier on, refusing to reveal his real identity as a prank.
After the American victory at Buena Vista, "Old Rough and Ready" political clubs were formed which supported Taylor for President, although no one knew for sure what his political beliefs were. Taylor declared, in 1848 that he had always been a Whig in principle, but he did consider himself a Jeffersonian-Democrat. Many southerners believed that Taylor supported slavery, and its expansion into the new territory absorbed from Mexico, and some were angered when Taylor suggested that if he were elected President he would not veto the Wilmot Proviso, which prevented such an expansion. Abolitionists did not support Taylor, since he was a slave-owner, while southerners knew that Taylor supported states' rights, and was opposed to protective tariffs and government spending for internal improvements.
Taylor received the Whig nomination for President in 1848. Millard Fillmore of New York was chosen as the Vice Presidential nominee. Taylor defeated Lewis Cass, the Democratic candidate, and Martin Van Buren, the Free Soil candidate. Taylor was the last Southerner to be elected president until Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
As president, Taylor was not inclined to be a puppet of Whig leaders in Congress. He angered many Southerners by taking a moderate stance on 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 just 16 months into his term. The true cause of Zachary Taylor's premature death is not known with certainty. On July 4, 1850, after watching a groundbreaking ceremony for the Washington Monument during the Independence Day celebration, Taylor tried to beat the summer heat by drinking a lot of iced water and cold milk, and eating cherries. Within several days he became severely ill with an unknown digestive ailment, and it became clear to him that he was approaching death. At about 10 o'clock in the morning on July 9, Taylor called his wife to him and asked her not to weep, saying: "I have always done my duty, I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me." He died within the hour. Contemporary reports listed the cause of death as "bilious diarrhoea, or a bilious cholera".
In the late 1980s, college professor and author Clara Rising theorized that Taylor was murdered by poison and was able to convince Taylor's closest living relative and the Coroner of Jefferson County, Kentucky, to order an exhumation. On June 17, 1991, Taylor's remains were exhumed and transported to the Office of the Kentucky Chief Medical Examiner, where radiological studies were conducted and samples of hair, fingernail and other tissues were removed. The remains were then returned to the cemetery and received appropriate honors at re-interment. Neutron activation analysis conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory revealed arsenic levels several hundred times lower than they would have been if Taylor had been poisoned. The coroner concluded that on a hot July day Taylor had attempted to cool himself with large amounts of cherries and iced milk. "In the unhealthy climate of Washington, with its open sewers and flies, Taylor came down with cholera morbus, or acute gastroenteritis as it is now called." He might have recovered, Coroner Samuel Eliot Morison said, but his doctors "drugged him with ipecac, calomel, opium and quinine (at 40 grains a whack), and bled and blistered him too. On July 9, he died."
Known as "Old Rough and Ready," Taylor had a forty-year military career in the United States Army. He served in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, and the Second Seminole War. He achieved his greatest military fame during the Mexican-American War leading American troops to victory in the Battle of Palo Alto and the Battle of Monterrey despite being out-numbered. He was criticized by President James K. Polk for not ensuring the Mexican army that surrendered at Monterrey disbanded, although Polk's criticism of Taylor was likely motivated by political jealousy. Polk, a Democrat, was concerned about Taylor's popularity and rumours that the Whigs would run Taylor for President in the next election. Polk ordered that half of Taylor's army was to join General Winfield Scott's soldiers as they besieged Veracruz. When Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna discovered that Taylor had only 6,000 men, many of whom were not regular army soldiers, Santa Anna attacked Taylor with 20,000 men at the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847. The American forces suffered 672 casualties, but the Mexican losses were nearly triple that and as a result, Santa Anna left the field of battle. Buena Vista turned Taylor into a hero, and he was compared to George Washington and Andrew Jackson in the American press.
As a General, Taylor was very informal. Stories have been told about his informal dress, the tattered straw hat he wore, and the casual way he always sat on top of his horse, "Old Whitey," while shots buzzed around his head. When an army courier looking for General Taylor mistook him for an insignificant old man, Taylor is reported to have had the courier on, refusing to reveal his real identity as a prank.
After the American victory at Buena Vista, "Old Rough and Ready" political clubs were formed which supported Taylor for President, although no one knew for sure what his political beliefs were. Taylor declared, in 1848 that he had always been a Whig in principle, but he did consider himself a Jeffersonian-Democrat. Many southerners believed that Taylor supported slavery, and its expansion into the new territory absorbed from Mexico, and some were angered when Taylor suggested that if he were elected President he would not veto the Wilmot Proviso, which prevented such an expansion. Abolitionists did not support Taylor, since he was a slave-owner, while southerners knew that Taylor supported states' rights, and was opposed to protective tariffs and government spending for internal improvements.
Taylor received the Whig nomination for President in 1848. Millard Fillmore of New York was chosen as the Vice Presidential nominee. Taylor defeated Lewis Cass, the Democratic candidate, and Martin Van Buren, the Free Soil candidate. Taylor was the last Southerner to be elected president until Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
As president, Taylor was not inclined to be a puppet of Whig leaders in Congress. He angered many Southerners by taking a moderate stance on 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 just 16 months into his term. The true cause of Zachary Taylor's premature death is not known with certainty. On July 4, 1850, after watching a groundbreaking ceremony for the Washington Monument during the Independence Day celebration, Taylor tried to beat the summer heat by drinking a lot of iced water and cold milk, and eating cherries. Within several days he became severely ill with an unknown digestive ailment, and it became clear to him that he was approaching death. At about 10 o'clock in the morning on July 9, Taylor called his wife to him and asked her not to weep, saying: "I have always done my duty, I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me." He died within the hour. Contemporary reports listed the cause of death as "bilious diarrhoea, or a bilious cholera".
In the late 1980s, college professor and author Clara Rising theorized that Taylor was murdered by poison and was able to convince Taylor's closest living relative and the Coroner of Jefferson County, Kentucky, to order an exhumation. On June 17, 1991, Taylor's remains were exhumed and transported to the Office of the Kentucky Chief Medical Examiner, where radiological studies were conducted and samples of hair, fingernail and other tissues were removed. The remains were then returned to the cemetery and received appropriate honors at re-interment. Neutron activation analysis conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory revealed arsenic levels several hundred times lower than they would have been if Taylor had been poisoned. The coroner concluded that on a hot July day Taylor had attempted to cool himself with large amounts of cherries and iced milk. "In the unhealthy climate of Washington, with its open sewers and flies, Taylor came down with cholera morbus, or acute gastroenteritis as it is now called." He might have recovered, Coroner Samuel Eliot Morison said, but his doctors "drugged him with ipecac, calomel, opium and quinine (at 40 grains a whack), and bled and blistered him too. On July 9, he died."