Zachary Taylor

I read Zachary Taylor (American Presidents Series) by John S.D. Eisenhower⁰.

Eisenhower did an excellent job summarizing and taking excerpts from Zachary Taylor’s life. He did such an excellent job that I would prefer writing about my impressions of Zachary Taylor rather than the writing itself¹.

(1) As an aside, I think an audience taking something for granted is a great compliment. For example, while watching James Cameron’s Avatar I didn’t think about how they rendered the big blue people, I was busy suspending my disbelief. Right now I’m a software developer. It would be the greatest privilege for my software to become boring.

I was surprised by just how normal Eisenhower makes Zachary Taylor out to be. Yes, Taylor did command some of the victories essential to winning the Mexican-American war. But it took a long career in the military, where I would hardly call him a main character, to get there. After these victories, it appeared history simply plucked him from where he resided in Louisiana and dropped him into the white house. In Eisenhower’s biography, we hear little of Taylor’s political ambitions. Rather, it’s made out to be a strategic choice, led by Whig senator John J. Crittenden, to pick a name that the American public knew. That’s over “main characters” who’ve appeared in lots of biographies I’ve read. For example, “chief of the Whig party” Henry Clay who had always pined for that commander in chief position, but failed time and time again.