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- BIOGRAPHY
Son of Richard Taylor and Sarah Dabney Strother, Zachary Taylor was born 24 November 1784 at Montebello, Orange County, Virginia. On 21 June 1810 in Jefferson County, Kentucky, he married Margaret Mackall Smith and they had six children.
Zachary Taylor was an American soldier and 12th president of the United States. In 1808 he entered the army and, in 1812, held Fort Harrison on the Wabash against Indians, and in 1832 fought with Black Hawk. Now a colonel, in 1836, he was ordered to Florida, where in 1837 he defeated the Seminoles at Okeechobee Swamp, and won the brevet of brigadier-general.
In 1840 he was placed in command of the army in the southwest. When Texas was annexed in 1845 he gathered 4000 regulars at Corpus Christi in March 1846, marched to the Rio Grande, and erected Fort Brown opposite Matamoros. The Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande to drive him out. But the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma on 8 and 9 May repulsed them, and Taylor seized Matamoros. In September he captured Monterey. After seven weeks' vain waiting for reinforcements the march was resumed. Victoria was occupied, but the line of communication was 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 falling back to Monterey when his regulars were taken from him to form part of a new expedition under General Scott. Santa Ana, the Mexican general, overtook his 5000 volunteers near the pass of Buena Vista; but Taylor, on 22 February 1847, repulsed the 21,000 Mexicans with a loss thrice as great as his own.
In 1848 the Whigs selected Taylor as their candidate for the presidency. He was elected in November and inaugurated the following March. Struggle over the extension of slavery had begun. The Democratic congress 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. Taylor remained firm and impartial though his son-in-law, Jefferson Davis, headed the extreme proslavery faction. Before a decision was reached President Taylor died 9 July 1850 at the White House in Washington.
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