Zachary Taylor: Soldier of the Republic

Prof. Holman Hamilton

reviewed July 2016

Another ‘tick’ off my bucket list of reading at least one biography of every U.S. President. As I’ve stated in my other reviews, the lesser known the President, the harder the bios are to find. Good bios, anyway. Was this book good? Well, yes. I guess. Sort of. I’ve noticed that books, particularly biographies, that were written quite some time ago are a bit harder to digest. My theory is that as people’s attention spans have gotten shorter, publishers now demand that books be more concise and ‘sexy’. This book was written in 1940, and really wasn’t either.

Then, one must be cautious since this book is only the first volume of a two-volume set. I’m not sure why. This entire book isn’t even 300 pages. I’m guessing the author came to a stopping point, needed a break, and he and his publisher decided to go ahead and put out a volume 1. This isn’t an anomaly, but this book didn’t seem to warrant two separate works due to its limited subject matter.

I guess you could argue that ‘subject’ wise, there are two different areas of Zachary Taylor’s life to focus. This book focuses on the ‘soldier’ whereas the follow-up focuses on the ‘president’. There’s a lot of soldiering here. The book really didn’t seem to dwell too much on the man’s personal life and background.

If it did talk about his youth, I don’t remember much. We learn he was a gallant, respectable officer that fought in the War of 1812, the (lesser known) Black Hawk War, and the Mexican-American War in which he served as the General of the entire army. My problem with books about wars is when they drone on in detail about particular battles. It’s a bit much for my brain to keep straight all of the names of the soldiers, the strange towns, the detailed strategies and the rampant comings and goings. I’ve made this observation about a lot of ‘war’ books, so perhaps the problem isn’t the book, but rather me.

When this book took a 50,000-foot view of the conflict, however, is when I enjoyed the book the most. I’ve never actually read an account of the Black Hawk War, and this book did a decent job summing up the high points. The parts of the Mexican-American War that I found most interesting were not the monotonous battle descriptions, but rather the political aspect of the conflict. The Commander in Chief, James Polk, is a Democrat. General Zachary Taylor seems to lean towards an affiliation with the rival Whig party and is becoming vastly popular among the population due to his success in the war. If you’re the president, I guess you can’t let the other guy on the other team look too good, so it seems as though Taylor is pushed out of the top position in the army to make room for someone not as good (General Winfield Scott – ironically also a Whig but not as strong). Why worry about winning a war when there’s politics to be fought over as well?

As I write this review, I’m about 20% through the second volume, and that one is about the same. It gives the details as it should but doesn’t really add a lot of excitement to the narrative. Although this book was less than 300 pages, I think it could have been better had it be scaled back even more, and then maybe combined with volume 2. Maybe such things weren’t thought of in the book publishing world 75 years ago. Also, I really should reserve judgement until after I have completed the second installment. Overall a decent account, but it tended to be rather dry in places.

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