Table of Contents
Introduction
Zachary Taylor was born in the year 1784 and died 66 years later. He was the twelfth president of America (Bauer, 1985). He was also the country's military leader who at first showed very little interest in politics. In his quest to become the president of the US, he defeated Lewis Cass and became the last Whig to hold the highest office in the land. He is today popularly known as the General who successfully led the US troops to win the Mexican War in the Battle of Palo Alto and the Black Hawk War (Taylor & Samson, 2010).
To emphasize the American claim that the border was at the Rio Grande, the General sent his forces to the river to build Fort Texas. The battle began frantically, that the cannon fire did not cease for a moment. The Mexicans continued pushing and killed two of the American military men including the Fort's commander himself. On hearing this, General Taylor began to move his over 2000 troops to the Fort's aid but was cut off a few moments later by a Mexican force of roughly above 3000. When the battle of Palo Alto started, the General retained a rather more defensive than an offensive attack, using a tactic popularly known as the Flying artillery, which the Mexican Line that was stretched like a mile long was unable to counter (Conway & Pellon, 2010).
Conclusion
Taylor was not very popular among the southerners for his moderate stance on the tricky issue of slavery. He advised those from New Mexico and Texas to come up with a constitution for statehood. This is what actually did set the stage for compromise like over a year after his election. He was a principled kind of a leader both for the country and the military who was not a used as a puppet by the Whig leaders in Congress. This attributes of compromising and of being principled really stood out in him.
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