Zachary Taylor (24 November 1784 – 9 July 1850) was President of the United States from 4 March 1849 to 9 July 1850, succeeding James K. Polk and preceding Millard Fillmore. He distinguished himself as a general during the Second Seminole War and the Mexican-American War, and he was elected President as a Whig. He died in office in 1850.
Biography[]
Zachary Taylor was born in Barboursville, Virginia in 1784 to a prominent family of plantation owners, and he was raised in Kentucky. Taylor joined the US Army in 1807, and he first distinguished himself as a captain in the defense of Fort Harrison against the Shawnee leader Tecumseh in 1812. In later conflicts with the Native Americans - the Black Hawk War in 1832 and the Second Seminole War later in the 1830s - he proved a decisive military commander, but also humane and honorable in his dealings with defeated Indians. His victory over the Seminole at Lake Okeechobee in 1837 brought him promotion to Brigadier-General. Taylor became a well-known officer with a distinctive style - his disdain for formality and his "spit and polish" earned him the nickname "Rough and Ready". But it was the outbreak of war with Mexico that made him famous. In January 1846, President James K. Polk ordered him to lead troops south to the Rio Grande, an act of provocation to which Mexico reacted with force. Fighting against heavy odds, Taylor defeated the Mexicans at Palo Alto in May, principally through aggressive use of mobile field artillery.
In September, Taylor took Monterrey by assault, agreeing to an armistice with the defenders to limit the lboodshed. This agreement outraged Polk, who took the best of Taylor's troops away for an invasion of Veracruz. But Taylor refused to be relegated to the backstage and continued his campaign. In February 1847, he defeated an army led by the Mexican general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at Buena Vista, even though he was outnumbered five to one. The popularity he gained from these victories provided a springboard for Taylor's election as president in 1848. He defeated Winfield Scott and Henry Clay to take the Whig nomination and defeated Democratic candidates Lewis Cass and William Orlando Butler, as well as Free Soil Party candidates Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams Sr.. Taylor did not push for the expansion of slavery, instead seeking sectional harmony. To avoid the issue of slavery, he had New Mexico and California bypass the territorial stage and become states under the Compromise of 1850. He died of a stomach ailment in 1850 at the age of 65.
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