The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914/Zachary Taylor
, twelfth president of the
United States, born in Orange County, Va.,
September 24, 1784; died in the executive mansion,
Washington, D. C., July 9, 1850. He was fifth
in descent from James Taylor, who came to this
country from Carlisle, on the English border, in
1658. His father, Col. Richard Taylor, an officer
in the war of the Revolution, was conspicuous for
zeal and daring among men in whom personal
gallantry was the rule. After the war he retired to
private life, and in 1785 removed to Kentucky,
then a sparsely occupied county of Virginia, and
made his home near the present city of Louisville,
where he died. Zachary was the third son.
Brought up on a farm in a new settlement, he had
few scholastic opportunities; but in the thrift,
industry, self-denial, and forethought required by the
circumstances, he learned such lessons as were well
adapted to form the character illustrated by his
eventful career. Yet he had also another form of
education. The liberal grants of land that
Virginia made to her soldiers caused many of them,
after the peace of 1783, to remove to the west; thus
Col. Taylor's neighbors included many who had
been his fellow-soldiers, and these often met around

his wide hearth. Their conversation would
naturally be reminiscences of their military life, and all
the sons of Col. Taylor, save one, Hancock, entered
the U. S. army. The rapid extension of settlements
on the border was productive of frequent
collision with the Indians, and almost constantly
required the protection of a military force.

In 1808, on the recommendation of President
Jefferson, congress authorized the raising of five
regiments of infantry, one of riflemen, one of light
artillery, and one of light dragoons. From the
terms of the act it was understood that this was
not to be a permanent increase of the U. S. Army,
and many of the officers of the “old army”
declined to seek promotion in the new regiments. At
this period questions had arisen between the United
States and Great Britain which caused serious
anticipations of a war with that power, and led
many to regard the additional force authorized as
a preliminary step in preparation for such a war.
Zachary Taylor, then in his twenty-fourth year,
applied for a commission, and was appointed a
1st lieutenant in the 7th infantry, one of the new
regiments, and in 1810 was promoted to the grade
of captain in the same regiment, according to the
regulations of the service. He was happily
married in 1810 to Miss Margaret Smith, of Calvert
County, Md., who shared with him the privations
and dangers of his many years of frontier service,

and survived him but a short time. The troubles
on the frontier continued to increase until 1811,
when Gen. William H. Harrison, afterward president
of the United States, marched against the
stronghold of the Shawnees and fought the battle
of Tippecanoe.

In June, 1812, war was declared against
England, and this increased the widespread and not
unfounded fears of Indian invasion in the valley of
the Wabash. To protect Vincennes from sudden
assault, Capt. Taylor was ordered to Fort
Harrison, a stockade on the river above Vincennes, and
with his company of infantry, about fifty strong,
made preparations to defend the place. He had
not long to wait. A large body of Indians, knowing
the smallness of the garrison, came, confidently
counting on its capture; but as it is a rule in their
warfare to seek by stratagem to avoid equal risk
and probable loss, they tried various expedients,
which were foiled by the judgment, vigilance, and
courage of the commander, and when the final
attack was made, the brave little garrison repelled
it with such loss to the assailants that when, in the
following October, Gen. Hopkins came to support
Fort Harrison, no Indians were to be found there
about. For the defence of Fort Harrison, Capt.
Taylor received the brevet of major, an honor that
had seldom, if ever before, been conferred for
service in Indian war. In the following November,

Maj. Taylor, with a battalion of regulars, formed a
part of the command of Gen. Hopkins in the
expedition against the hostile Indians at the head-waters
of the Wabash. In 1814, with his separate
command, he being then a major by commission, he
made a campaign against the hostile Indians and
their British allies on Rock river, which was so
successful as to give subsequent security to that
immediate frontier. In such service, not the less
hazardous or indicative of merit because on a small
scale, he passed the period of his employment on
that frontier until the treaty of peace with Great
Britain disposed the Indians to be quiet.

After the war, March 3, 1815, a law was
enacted to fix the military peace establishment of the
United States. By this act the whole force was
to be reduced to 10,000 men, with such proportions
of artillery, infantry, and riflemen as the president
should judge proper. The president was to cause
the officers and men of the existing army to be
arranged, by unrestricted transfers, so as to form
the corps authorized by the recent act, and the
supernumeraries were to be discharged. Maj.
Taylor had borne the responsibilities and
performed the duties of a battalion commander so long
and successfully that when the arranging board
reduced him to the rank of captain in the new
organization he felt the injustice, but resigned from
the army without complaint, returned home, and

proceeded, as he said in after years, “to make a
crop of corn.” Influences that were certainly not
employed by him, and are unknown to the writer
of this sketch, caused his restoration to the grade
of major, and he resumed his place in the army,
there to continue until the voice of the people called
him to the highest office within their gift. Under
the rules that governed promotion in the army,
Maj. Taylor became lieutenant-colonel of the 1st
infantry, and for a period commanded at Fort
Snelling, then the advanced post in the northwest.
In 1832 he became colonel of the 1st infantry,
with headquarters at Fort Crawford, Prairie du
Chien. The barracks were unfinished, and his practical
mind and conscientious attention to every
duty were manifest in the progress and completion
of the work. The second Black Hawk campaign
occurred this year, and Col. Taylor, with the
greater part of his regiment, joined the army
commanded by Gen. Henry Atkinson, and with it
moved from Rock Island up the valley of Rock
river, following Black Hawk, who had gone to
make a junction with the Pottawattomie band of
the Prophet, a nephew of Black Hawk. This was
in violation of the treaty he had made with Gen.
Edmund P. Gaines in 1831, by which he was
required to remove to the west of the Mississippi,
relinquishing all claim to the Rock river villages.
It was assumed that his purpose in returning to

the east side of the river was hostile, and, from the
defenceless condition of the settlers and the horror
of savage atrocity, great excitement was created,
due rather to his fame as a warrior than to the
number of his followers. If, as he subsequently
declared, his design was to go and live peaceably
with his nephew, the Prophet, rather than with the
Foxes, of whom Keokuk was the chief, that design
may have been frustrated by the lamentable
mistake of some mounted volunteers in hastening
forward in pursuit of Black Hawk, who with his band
— men, women, and children — was going up on the
south side of the Rock river. The pursuers fell into
an ambuscade, and were routed with some loss and
in great confusion. The event will be remembered
by the men of that day as “Stillman's run.”

The vanity of the young Indians was inflated
by their success, as was shown by some exultant
messages; and the sagacious old chief, whatever he
may have previously calculated upon, now saw that
war was inevitable and immediate. With his band,
recruited by warriors from the Prophet's band, he
crossed to the north side of Rock river, and, passing
through the swamp Koshkenong, fled over the
prairies west of the Four Lakes, toward Wisconsin
river. Gen. Henry Dodge, with a battalion
of mounted miners, overtook the Indians while they
were crossing the Wisconsin and attacked their
rear-guard, which, when the main body had crossed,

swam the river and joined the retreat over the
Kickapoo hills toward the Mississippi. Gen.
Atkinson, with his whole army, continued the
pursuit, and, after a toilsome march, overtook the
Indians north of Prairie du Chien, on the bank
of the Mississippi, to the west side of which they
were preparing to cross in bark canoes made on
the spot. That purpose was foiled by the
accidental arrival of a steamboat with a small gun on
board. The Indians took cover in a willow marsh,
and there was fought the battle of the Bad Axe.
The Indians were defeated and dispersed, and the
campaign ended. In the meantime, Gen. Winfield
Scott, with troops from the east, took chief
command and established his headquarters at Rock
Island, and thither Gen. Atkinson went with the
regular troops, except that part of the 1st infantry
which constituted the garrison of Fort Crawford.
With these Col. Taylor returned to Prairie du
Chien. When it was reported that the Indians
were on an island above the prairie, he sent a
lieutenant with an appropriate command to explore
the island, where unmistakable evidence was found
of the recent presence of the Indians and of their
departure. Immediately thereafter a group of
Indians appeared on the east bank of the river
under a white flag, who proved to be Black Hawk,
with a remnant of his band and a few friendly
Winnebagoes. The lieutenant went with them to

the fort, where Col. Taylor received them, except
the Winnebagoes, as prisoners. A lieutenant and
a guard were sent with them, sixty in number —
men, women, and children — by steamboat, to Rock
Island, there to report to Gen. Scott for orders in
regard to the prisoners. Col. Taylor actively
participated in the campaign up to its close, and
to him was surrendered the chief who had most
illustrated the warlike instincts of the Indian race,
to whom history must fairly accord the credit of
having done much under the most disadvantageous
circumstances. In 1836 Col. Taylor was ordered
to Florida for service in the Seminole war, and
the next year he defeated the Indians in the decisive
battle of Okechobee, for which he received the
brevet of brigadier-general, and in 1838 was
appointed to the chief command in Florida. In 1840
he was assigned to command the southern division
of the western department of the army. Though
Gen. Taylor had for many years been a
cotton-planter, his family had lived with him at his military
station, but, when ordered for an indefinite
time on field service, he made his family home at
Baton Rouge, La.

Texas having been annexed to the United States
in 1845, Mexico threatened to invade Texas with
the avowed purpose to recover the territory, and
Gen. Taylor was ordered to defend it as a part of
the United States. He proceeded with all his
available
force, about 1,500 men, to Corpus Christi,
where he was joined by re-enforcements of regulars
and volunteers. Discussion had arisen as to
whether the Nueces or the Rio Grande was the
proper boundary of Texas. His political opinions,
whatever they might be, were subordinate to the
duty of a soldier to execute the orders of his
government, and, without uttering it, he acted on the
apothegm of Decatur: “My country, right or
wrong, my country.” Texas claimed protection
for her frontier, the president recognized the fact
that Texas had been admitted to the Union with
the Rio Grande as her boundary, and Gen. Taylor
was instructed to advance to that river. His force
had been increased to about 4,000, when, on March
8, 1846, he marched from Corpus Christi. He was
of course conscious of the inadequacy of his division
to resist such an army as Mexico might send against
it, but when ordered by superior authority it was
not his to remonstrate. Gen. Gaines, commanding
the western department, had made requisitions
for a sufficient number of volunteers to join Taylor,
but the secretary of war countermanded them,
except as to such as had already joined. Gen.
Taylor, with a main depot at Point Isabel,
advanced to the bank of the Rio Grande opposite
to Matamoras, and there made provision for
defence of the place called Fort Brown. Soon after
his arrival, Ampudia, the Mexican general at
Matamoras,
made a threatening demand that Gen. Taylor
should withdraw his troops beyond the Nueces,
to which he replied that his position had been taken
by order of his government, and would be
maintained. Having completed the intrenchment, and
being short of supplies, he left a garrison to hold
it, and marched with an aggregate force of 2,288
men to obtain additional supplies from Point Isabel,
about thirty miles distant.

Gen. Arista, the new Mexican commander, availing
himself of the opportunity to interpose, crossed
the river below Fort Brown with a force estimated
at 6,000 regular troops, 10 pieces of artillery, and
a considerable amount of auxiliaries. In the afternoon
of the second day's march from Point Isabel
these were reported by Gen. Taylor's cavalry to
be in his front, and he halted to allow the
command to rest and for the needful dispositions for
battle. In the evening a request was made that
a council of war should be held, to which Gen.
Taylor assented. The prevalent opinion was in
favor of falling back to Point Isabel, there to
intrench and wait for re-enforcements. After
listening to a full expression of views, the general
announced: “I shall go to Fort Brown or stay in
my shoes,” a western expression equivalent to “or
die in the attempt.” He then notified the officers
to prepare to attack the enemy at dawn of day.
In the morning of May 8 the advance was made

by columns until the enemy's batteries opened,
when line of battle was formed and Taylor's artillery,
inferior in number but otherwise superior, was
brought fully into action and soon dispersed the
mass of the enemy's cavalry. The chaparral, dense
copses of thorn-bushes, served both to conceal the
position of the enemy and to impede the
movements of the attacking force. The action closed
at night, when the enemy retired, and Gen. Taylor
bivouacked on the field. Early in the morning of
May 9 he resumed his march, and in the afternoon
encountered Gen. Arista in a strong position with
artillery advantageously posted. Taylor's infantry
pushed through the chaparral lining both sides of
the road, and drove the enemy's infantry before
them; but the batteries held their position, and
were so fatally used that it was an absolute necessity
to capture them. For this purpose the
general ordered a squadron of dragoons to charge
them. The enemy's gunners were cut down at their
pieces, the commanding officer was captured, and
the infantry soon made the victory complete. The
Mexican loss in the two battles was estimated at a
thousand; the American, killed, forty-nine. The
enemy precipitately recrossed the Rio Grande,
leaving the usual evidence of a routed army. Gen.
Taylor then proceeded to Fort Brown. During
his absence it had been heavily bombarded, and the
commander, Maj. Brown, had been killed. The

Mexicans evacuated Matamoras, and Gen. Taylor
took possession, May 18.

The Rio Grande, except at time of flood, offered
little obstacle to predatory incursions, and it was
obviously sound policy to press the enemy back
from the border. Gen. Taylor, therefore, moved
forward to Camargo, on the San Juan, a tributary
of the Rio Grande. This last-named river rose so
as to enable steamboats to transport troops and
supplies, and by September a sufficiently large
force of volunteers had reported at Gen. Taylor's
headquarters to justify a further march into the
interior, but the move must be by land, and for
that there was far from adequate transportation.
Hiring Mexican packers to supplement the little
transportation on hand, he was able to add one
division of volunteers to the regulars of his
command, and with a force of 6,625 men of all arms
he marched against Monterey, a fortified town of
great natural strength, garrisoned by 10,000 men
under Gen. Ampudia. On September 19 he
encamped before the town, and on the 21st began
the attack. On the third day Gen. Ampudia
proposed to surrender, commissioners were appointed,
and terms of capitulation agreed upon, by which
the enemy were to retire beyond a specified line,
and the United States forces were not to advance
beyond that line during the next eight weeks or
until the pleasure of the respective governments

should be known. By some strange misconception,
the U. S. government disapproved the arrangement,
and ordered that the armistice should be
terminated, by which we lost whatever had been
gained in the interests of peace by the generous
terms of the capitulation, and got nothing, for,
during the short time that remained unexpired, no
provision had been or could be made to enable
Gen. Taylor to advance into the heart of Mexico.
Presuming that such must be the purpose of the
government, he assiduously strove to collect the
means for that object. When his preparations
were well-nigh perfected, Gen. Scott was sent to
Mexico with orders that enabled him at discretion
to strip Gen. Taylor of both troops and material
of war, to be used on another line of operations.
The projected campaign against the capital of
Mexico was to be from Vera Cruz, up the steppes,
and against the fortifications that had been built to
resist any probable invasion, instead of from
Saltillo, across the plains to the comparatively
undefended capital. The difficulty on this route was
the waterless space to be crossed, and against that
Gen. Taylor had ingeniously provided. According
to instructions, he went to Victoria, Mexico,
turned over his troops, except a proper escort to
return through a country of hostiles to Monterey,
and then went to Agua Nueva, beyond Saltillo,

where he was joined by Gen. Wool with his
command from Chihuahua.

[  ]

Gen. Santa-Anna saw the invitation offered by
the withdrawal of Gen. Taylor's troops, and with
a well-appointed army, 20,000 strong, marched
with the assurance of easily recovering their lost
territory. Gen. Taylor fell back to the narrow
pass in front of the hacienda of Buena Vista, and
here stood on the defensive. His force was 5,400
of all arms; but of these only three batteries of
artillery, one squadron of dragoons, one mounted
company of Texans, and one regiment of Mississippi
riflemen had ever been under fire. Some
skirmishing occurred on February 22, and a general
assault along the whole line was made on the
morning of the 23d. The battle, with varying
fortune, continued throughout the day; at evening
the enemy retired, and during the night retreated
by the route on which he had advanced, having
suffered much by the casualties of battle, but still
more by desertions. So Santa-Anna returned with
but a remnant of the regular army of Mexico, on
which reliance had been placed to repel invasion,
and thenceforward peace was undisturbed in the
valley of the Rio Grande. At that time Gen.
Taylor's capacity was not justly estimated, his golden
silence being often misunderstood. His reply to
Sec. Marcy's strictures in regard to the capitulation
of Monterey exhibited such vigor of thought

and grace of expression that many attributed it
to a member of his staff who had a literary reputation.
It was written by Gen. Taylor's own hand,
in the open air, by his camp-fire at Victoria,
Mexico.

Many years of military routine had not dulled
his desire for knowledge; he had extensively studied
both ancient and modern history, especially the
English. Unpretending, meditative, observant,
and conclusive, he was best understood and most
appreciated by those who had known him long and
intimately. In a campaign he gathered information
from all who approached him, however sinister
their motive might be. By comparison and
elimination he gained a knowledge that was often
surprising as to the position and designs of the enemy.
In battle he was vigilantly active, though quiet in
bearing; calm and considerate, though stern and
inflexible; but when the excitement of danger and
strife had subsided, he had a father's tenderness for
the wounded, and none more sincerely mourned
for those who had bravely fallen in the line of their
duty.

Before his nomination for the presidency Gen.
Taylor had no political aspirations and looked
forward to the time when he should retire from the
army as the beginning of a farmer's life. He had
planned for his retreat a stock-farm in the hills of
Jefferson County, behind his cotton-plantation on

the Mississippi river. In his case, as in some other
notable instances, the fact of not desiring office
rather increased than diminished popular confidence,
so that unseeking he was sought. From
early manhood he had served continually in the
U. S. army. His duties had led him to consider
the welfare of the country as one and indivisible,
and his opinions were free from party or sectional
intensity. Conscious of his want of knowledge of
the machinery of the civil service, he formed his
cabinet to supplement his own information. They
were men well known to the public by the eminent
civil stations they had occupied, and were only thus
known to Gen. Taylor, who as president had
literally no friends to reward and no enemies to
punish. The cabinet was constituted as follows:
John M. Clayton, of Delaware, secretary of state;
William M. Meredith, of Pennsylvania, secretary
of the treasury; George W. Crawford, of Georgia,
secretary of war; W. Ballard Preston, of Virginia,
secretary of the navy; Reverdy Johnson, of Mary
land, attorney-general; Alexander H. H. Stuart,
of Virginia, secretary of the interior. All these
had served in the U. S. senate or the house of
representatives, and all were lawyers. Taylor was
the popular hero of a foreign war which had been
victoriously ended, bringing to the United States
a large acquisition of territory with an alluring
harvest of gold, but, all unheeded, bringing also a

large addition to the elements of sectional contention.
These were soon developed, and while the
upper air was calm and the sun of prosperity shone
brightly on the land, the attentive listener could
hear the rumbling sound of approaching convulsion.
President Taylor, with the keen watchfulness
and intuitive perception that had characterized him
as a commander in the field, easily saw and
appreciated the danger; but before it had reached the
stage for official action he died. His party and
local relations, being a Whig and a southern
planter, gave him the vantage-ground for the exercise
of a restraining influence in the threatened
contest. His views, matured under former
responsibilities, were tersely given to confidential friends,
but as none of his cabinet are living (Stuart was
the last survivor), their consultations cannot be
learned unless from preserved manuscript. During
the brief period of his administration the rules
that would govern it were made manifest, and no
law for civil-service reform was needful for his
guidance. With him the bestowal of office was a
trust held for the people; it was not to be gained
by proof of party zeal and labor. The fact of
holding Democratic opinions was not a disqualification
for the office. Nepotism had with him no
quarter. Gen. Winfield Scott related to the writer
an anecdote that may appropriately close this
sketch. He said he had remarked to his wife that

Gen. Taylor was an upright man, to which she
replied: “He is not”; that he insisted his long
acquaintance should enable him to judge better
than she. But she persisted in her denial, and he
asked: “Then what manner of man is he?” when
she said: “He is a downright man.”

As president he had purity, patriotism, and
discretion to guide him in his new field of duty, and
had he lived long enough to stamp his character
on his administration, it would have been found
that the great soldier was equally fitted to be the
head of a government. He was buried in the
family cemetery, five miles from Louisville. Gen.
Taylor's life was written by Joseph R. Fry and
Robert T. Conrad (Philadelphia, 1848), by John
Frost (New York, 1848), and by Gen. O. O. Howard,
in the “Great Commanders” series (1892).

His wife, , born in Calvert County,
Md., in 1790; died near Pascagoula, La., August
18, 1852, was the daughter of Walter Smith, a
Maryland planter. He was descended from Richard
Smith, who was appointed Attorney-General
of Maryland by Oliver Cromwell. She received a
home education, married early in life, and, until
her husband's election to the presidency, resided
with him chiefly in garrisons or on the frontier.
During the Florida war she established herself at
Tampa bay, and did good service among the sick

and wounded in the hospitals there. Mrs. Taylor
was without social ambition, and when Gen. Taylor
became president she reluctantly accepted her
responsibilities, regarding the office as a “plot to
deprive her of her husband's society and to shorten
his life by unnecessary care.” She surrendered to
her youngest daughter the superintendence of the
household, and took no part in social duties. Her
eldest daughter, , married Dr. Robert Wood,
Assistant-Surgeon-General of the Army.
Another daughter, , became the wife of
Jefferson Davis, the marriage taking place near
Louisville, Ky., the bride's uncle, Hancock Taylor,
acting for her father, who was then with his
command on the frontier.

Another daughter, , born in Jefferson
County, Ky., in 1824, was educated in
Philadelphia, married Maj. William W. S. Bliss in her
nineteenth year, and, on her father's inauguration,
became mistress of the White House. Mrs. Bliss,
or Miss Betty, as she was popularly called, was
a graceful and accomplished hostess, and, it is said,
“did the honors of the establishment with the
artlessness of a rustic belle and the grace of a duchess.”
After the death of her distinguished father
in 1850, and her husband in 1853, she spent several
years in retirement, subsequently marrying Philip
Pendleton Dandridge, of Winchester, Va., whom

she survived, and died there in 1910, the last of
General Taylor's children.

His only son, , soldier, born in Jefferson
County, Ky., January 27, 1826; died in New
York city, April 12, 1879, was sent to Edinburgh
when thirteen years old, where he spent three years
in studying the classics, and then a year in France.
He entered the junior class at Yale in 1843, and
was graduated there in 1845. He was a wide and
voracious though a desultory reader. From college
he went to his father's camp on the Rio
Grande, and he was present at Palo Alto and
Resaca de la Palma. His health then became
impaired, and he returned home. He resided on a
cotton-plantation in Jefferson County, Miss., until
1849, when he removed to a sugar-estate in St.
Charles Parish, Louisiana, about twenty miles
above New Orleans, where he was residing when
the civil war began. He was in the state senate
from 1856 to 1860, was a delegate to the Charleston
Democratic convention in 1860, and afterward
to that at Baltimore, and was a member of the
Secession convention of Louisiana. As a member
of the military committee, he aided the
governor in organizing troops, and in June, 1861, went
to Virginia as colonel of the 9th Louisiana volunteers.
The day he reached Richmond he left for
Manassas, arriving there at dusk on the day of the

battle. In the autumn he was made a brigadier-general,
and in the spring of 1862 he led his brigade
in the valley campaign under “Stonewall” Jackson.
He distinguished himself at Front Royal,
Middletown, Winchester, Strasburg, Cross Keys,
and Port Republic, and Jackson recommended him
for promotion. Taylor was also with Jackson in
the seven days battles before Richmond. He was
promoted to major-general, and assigned to the
command of Louisiana. The fatigues and
exposures of his campaigns there brought on a partial
and temporary paralysis of the lower limbs; but in
August he assumed command. The only communication
across the Mississippi retained by the
Confederates was between Vicksburg and Port Hudson;
but Taylor showed great ability in raising,
organizing, supplying, and handling an army, and
he gradually won back the state west of the Mississippi
from the National forces. He had reclaimed
the whole of this when Vicksburg fell, July 4, 1863,
and was then compelled to fall back west of
Berwick's bay.

Gen. Taylor's principal achievement during the
war was his defeat of Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks at
Sabine Cross-Roads, near Mansfield, De Soto
Parish, La., April 8, 1864. With 8,000 men he
attacked the advance of the northern army and
routed it, capturing twenty-two guns and a large
number of prisoners. He followed Banks, who

fell back to Pleasant Hill, and on the next day
again attacked him, when Taylor was defeated,
losing the fruits of the first day's victory. These
two days fighting have been frequently compared
to that of Shiloh — a surprise and defeat on the
first day, followed by a substantial victory of the
National forces on the second. In the summer of
1864 Taylor was promoted to be a lieutenant-general,
and ordered to the command of the
Department of Alabama, Mississippi, etc. Here he
was able merely to protract the contest, while the
great armies decided it. After Lee and Johnston
capitulated there was nothing for him, and he
surrendered to Gen. Edward R. S. Canby, at
Citronelle, May 8, 1865. The war left Taylor ruined
in fortune, and he soon went abroad. Returning
home, he took part in politics as an adviser, and
his counsel was held in esteem by Samuel J. Tilden
in his presidential canvass. During this period he
wrote his memoir of the war, entitled “Destruction
and Reconstruction” (New York, 1879).