Эту статью мне рекомендовал мой знакомый, который знает, как http://www.fast-torrent.ru, и его полностью устраивает качество таких фильмов. Это очень удобно, потому что можно смотреть любые фильмы в удобное время. Dressed in baggy cotton pants, a plain coat, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, and seated sideways on his horse Old Whitey, Zachary Taylor looked anything but a famous general. Yet that is what he had become in the early stages of the U.S.-Mexican War, and as he watched his men prepare for battle amid the arid terrain and looming mountains at Monterrey, he could already hear the drumbeat from those back in the states who wanted him to run for president. He neither encouraged them nor craved the office. He was, at heart, a career military man who had never voted, and who, in fact, never would vote, not Zachary Taylor 99 even when his own name appeared on the ballot next to the word president. k Zachary’s father, Richard Taylor, owned a prosperous farm in Virginia and fought in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. In October 1783 he received a large grant of land in Kentucky as reward for his service. He thereupon decided to take his family west. During the move, his wife, Sarah Dabney Strother Taylor, gave birth to Zachary on November 24, 1784, on a plantation in Orange County, Virginia. Richard Taylor built his new farm on the Muddy Fork of Beargrass Creek, five miles east of the frontier outpost called Louisville. There young Zachary grew up and played childhood games, while Indians lurked in the woods and the howling of wolves filled the night. He received little formal education and throughout his life read little and spelled poorly in a nearly indecipherable handwriting. When Congress increased the size of the U.S. Army in 1808 in response to a crisis with Britain, 24-year-old Zachary Taylor joined as a first lieutenant with the Seventh Infantry. This began his career with the military, which would last until his election as president. In 1810 Taylor married Margaret Mackall Smith, whose father owned a plantation in Calvert County, Maryland. They had six children, only three of whom reached adulthood. Zachary received 324 acres along Beargrass Creek from his father for a homestead but soon sold the property for a profit. Throughout the years he combined his military career with land speculation and farming. His friends later said he was always more comfortable discussing crops than current events. Over time, farmer Taylor amassed thousands of acres and hundreds of slaves but was involved in so many military campaigns he had to have others manage his property. Taylor experienced his first battle during the War of 1812, distinguishing himself with his defense of Fort Harrison in Indiana Territory in September of that year. The fort, a small stockade overlooking the Wabash River near Vincennes, came under attack from Indians allied with the British. After they set fire to a blockhouse, the flames spread to the barracks and nearly caused Taylor to evacuate. Taylor recalled: "Most of the men immediately gave themselves up for lost, and I had the greatest difficulty in getting my orders executed— from the raging of the fire—the yelling and howling of several hundred Indians— and cries of nine women and children.” But the young officer repulsed the attack and saved the fort at the cost of two of his men killed and two wounded. Taylor’s soldiers liked him. He was unpretentious and friendly (though short tempered), and he cared about their welfare. Never a brilliant tactician, he nevertheless won the respect of his men, and they would do almost anything for him. In the late 1830s, during the second Seminole War, he earned the nickname "Old Rough and Ready” for his disheveled appearance and toughness. He was considered among the most determined of Indian fighters. His work with the army in commanding numerous posts and in building roads, bridges, and forts helped open the West to non-Indian settlement. By 1844 he was a brevet brigadier general and the commanding officer of the U.S. Army First Department at Fort Jessup, Louisiana. Although his large head and torso were mismatched with his short legs and he much preferred his common clothes to his military attire, an observer said "he looked like a man born to command,” and his direct style communicated confidence and authority. Zachary Taylor’s renown as a general came as a result of the prominent role he played in the outbreak of the U.S.-Mexican War. After the United States annexed Texas in 1845, tension mounted with Mexico over the state’s southern boundary. President James K. Polk claimed it extended to the Rio Grande, but Mexico claimed it ended farther north, at the Nueces River. Polk determined to put pressure on Mexico to settle 100 Zachary Taylor the boundary dispute and to sell California. He did this by strengthening naval squadrons in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean and by sending Zachary Taylor’s army into Texas. In January 1846 Taylor received instructions "to advance and occupy . . . positions on or near the east Bank of the Rio del Norte as soon as it can be conveniently done with reference to the Season and the routes by which your movement must be made.” He was not to interfere with shipping along the Rio Grande, but if attacked he was to respond aggressively. On March 29, 1846, with his army near the river, Taylor notified Washington that "the attitude of the Mexicans is so far decidedly hostile.” And understandably so. With Mexico refusing to sell California, Polk wanted war. Taylor consequently directed the building of Fort Texas at Matamoros, along the Rio Grande and within the disputed terrain between it and the Nueces. Mexico considered the United States the inciter and invader, and on April 4 Major General Mariano Arista received orders from his superiors to attack. While a tense quiet continued, on April 14 Taylor blockaded the Rio Grande. Ten days later Arista sent 1,600 men across the river, west of Matamoros. Two companies of Americans clashed with the Mexicans on April 25, at which point Taylor declared "hostilities may now be considered commenced”—words of great relief to Polk, who was prepared to have Congress declare war without an armed battle but wanted one in order to portray Mexico as the aggressor. While the Mexican infantry laid siege to Fort Texas, Taylor’s main army fought Arista’s men at Palo Alto, along a strategic road that ended at Port Isabel on the Gulf Coast. The Mexicans suffered from a shortage of weapons and bad powder; their cannonballs skipped along the ground so slowly Americans could easily dodge them. Taylor’s victory resulted in 92 Mexicans killed and 116 wounded versus nine Americans killed and 44 wounded. Arista’s army retreated from Palo Alto on May 9, but unwilling to surrender the road, they fortified themselves at a shallow ravine, Resaca de la Palma. Taylor asked his officers if he should continue along the road to Fort Texas before receiving reinforcements. They said no, but he rejected their advice with the words "I shall go to Fort Texas or stay in my shoes,” meaning he would prefer to die in the attempt. Astride Old Whitey, Taylor unleashed infantry attacks that eventually sent the hardfighting Mexican army in flight across the Rio Grande, with some soldiers panicking and drowning in the river’s current. Taylor, however, showed a conservative streak that appeared often in his battles; he refused to pursue Arista’s army and let it slip into northern Mexico. Yet his victory meant he controlled the lower Rio Grande Valley and could strike across the river. At first unknown to Taylor, his success also elevated him to heroic status in the United States. Modern technology had arrived, and for the first time the telegraph was used to report battles and other wartime events. Americans followed the news closely, and Taylor’s reputation as a brave commander spread quickly. In September 1846 General Taylor marched toward the most important city in northern Mexico—Monterrey. A citadel defended Monterrey from the north, and the imposing peaks of the Sierra Madre bordered the city on the south. Taylor decided to approach from the plains along the eastern end of the city and have part of his army attack the heights in the west. Given his preference for conservative strategy, this bold move more likely came from his officers rather than from Taylor himself. In any event, forces under General William J. Worth attacked Federacion, a fortified Mexican post in the heights. After winning there they attacked a second post, Independencia, where they clawed their way up a steep hillside and engaged in hand-to-hand combat before subduing the enemy. The Americans now controlled the western heights. At the same time Taylor led an inept attack on the eastern part of Monterrey. His men were unused to fighting in narrow city streets and were unprepared for the house-to-house combat required when the entrenched Mexicans Zachary Taylor 101 fought from rooftops. The poor placement of field batteries further weakened the effort, but Worth came to Taylor’s rescue when he advanced from the west. In all, 394 Americans were killed or wounded before the Mexican army surrendered. Taylor agreed to an eightweek armistice, a plan that was later criticized since it allowed the Mexicans to regroup; but it also allowed his own army, tired and suffering from dwindling supplies, a respite. He later said, "These terms were liberal but . . . it was thought it would be judicious to act with magnanimity towards a prostrate foe, particularly as the president of the United States had offered to settle all differences between the two countries by negotiation. . . .” The armistice was sorely tested by American troops, particularly Texas soldiers, who engaged in atrocities against the Mexicans, but Taylor made it clear he considered such acts reprehensible. With the general’s military victories, his political star began lighting the Whig Party. The Whigs were searching for a presidential candidate, and newspaper editor Thurlow Weed, a party leader, championed Taylor’s cause, even though Old Rough and Ready had declared no party preference. Rallies at several locations, including the Revolutionary War battlefield at Trenton, New Jersey, fueled the Taylor mania. The general reacted, however, by saying the prospect of his candidacy "seems to me too visionary to require a serious answer. Such an idea never entered my head, nor is it likely to enter the head of any sane person.” After the battle at Monterrey, relations between President Polk and Zachary Taylor soured, partly because Polk thought the armistice was wrong and partly because he feared the enthusiasm for Taylor would damage his own Democratic Party’s prospects. He said, "Gen’l Taylor, I fear, is not the man for command of the army. He is brave but he does not seem to have resources or grasp of mind enough to conduct such a campaign.” In January 1847 the president ordered most of Taylor’s units to the Mexican coast to serve under General Winfield Scott, a Whig whose popularity paled next to Taylor’s. Taylor was incensed. Polk’s maneuver was aimed at pressuring him to quit, but resigning would make it look like he was deserting his men. Old Rough and Ready dug in his heels, and in February 1847 his outnumbered army confronted a huge Mexican force under the command of General Santa Anna at Buena Vista. Santa Anna told Taylor: "You are surrounded by twenty thousand men and cannot in any human probability avoid suffering a rout. . . . I wish to save you from a catastrophe, and for that purpose give you this notice, in order that you may surrender at discretion.” Taylor rejected the note, and a battle ensued during which he supposedly had this exchange with a battery firing on Santa Anna’s men: "What are you using, Captain, grape or canister?” "Canister, General.” "Single or double?” "Single.” "Well, double-shot your guns and give ‘em hell!” On February 24 the Mexican army retreated. Taylor once again failed to pursue his enemy, but the victory at Buena Vista secured northern Mexico and made him the undisputed leader for the Whig presidential nomination. More Whigs than ever before wanted him to run, and after his falling out with Polk he became receptive to their overtures. By the spring of 1847 he was telling a friend: "I will not say I would not serve if the good people of the country should think it proper to elect me.” In October 1847 Taylor asked for and received a leave of absence from the army. Although he maintained a nominal command in Mexico, his career in the military was nearing an end. Some Whigs, however, opposed Taylor. Abolitionists in the party condemned him for owning slaves. One said he "raises babies for the 102 Zachary Taylor market and makes merchandize of his fellow men! . . . He furnishes creole virgins for the ‘hells’ of New Orleans, and riots on the ruins of souls for whom the Man of Sorrows died.” Kentucky senator Henry Clay, long frustrated in his bid for the White House, started his own candidacy, a move that caused Taylor finally to declare his party allegiance in May 1848: "I am a Whig,” he said, "but not an ultra Whig.” He added, "If elected . . . I would endeavor to act independent of party domination & should feel bound to administer the Government untrammeled by party schemes. . . .” His words fell far short of a ringing endorsement of the Whig Party, and they would return to hurt his presidency. Nevertheless, in June 1848 the Whigs nominated him for president and chose Millard Fillmore, former chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and a candidate for the vice presidency in 1844, as his running mate. At the Whig National Convention, Ohio delegates signaled a major problem resulting from the U.S.-Mexican War and foreshadowed the intense crisis that would face Taylor’s presidency when they introduced a resolution affirming the right of Congress to control slavery in the territories. The convention rejected it. When Taylor decided to refrain from campaigning, many Whigs breathed a sigh of relief, for his comments often contained political gaffes. To avoid divisive issues, the Whigs refused to write a platform. On November 7, 1848, for the first time in a presidential race, all the nation’s voters went to the polls on the same day. Turnout lagged behind recent elections— 77 percent of the eligible voters turned out, with Taylor among those staying home— but Old Rough and Ready won with 163 electoral votes, compared to 127 for Democrat Lewis Cass of Michigan. Free Soil candidate Martin Van Buren, who ran on a platform opposed to slavery in the territories, failed to win a single state, but the votes he captured in New York threw that state to Taylor and assured the general’s victory. Political pundits thought Zachary Taylor would be a figurehead president. His detachment from Washington and his immersion in a military life led some to conclude he didn’t know what was going on. Outgoing President Polk called him "wholly unqualified for the station.” Adding to the doubts, Taylor stressed a traditional Whig attachment to a weak presidency and strong Congress. The general’s inexperience showed from the start. He sincerely believed he could be a president above party. This outlook, combined with political ineptness, caused him to ignore building good relations with the Whigs in Congress. Henry Clay said, "I have never before seen such an Administration. There is very little co-operation or concord between the two ends of the avenue. There is not, I believe, a prominent Whig in either House that has any confidential intercourse with the Executive.” But no one could doubt President Taylor’s commitment to national unity. He fought for it his entire life, and more than any other issue or principle, he believed in a strong Union. As president, he concluded, he must turn back sectionalism. His weak party relations combined with his unionist beliefs to produce a peculiar reaction to the hottest issue facing America after the war: slavery in the territories acquired from Mexico—namely, California and New Mexico. In January 1848 John Marshall, a mechanic building a sawmill on Johann Sutter’s land, discovered gold in California, near Sacramento. By the end of 1849 more than 100,000 Americans had moved into the territory, and Californians petitioned for statehood with an antislave constitution. At the same time a border dispute erupted between New Mexico and Texas, when Texas claimed a huge chunk of eastern New Mexico, reaching to Santa Fe. The dispute grew so acrimonious that armed conflict loomed. Many Northerners believed Texas wanted the land in order to expand its slave domain. Taylor believed the same and committed himself to upholding the New Mexican boundary as it existed under Mexico and as stipZachary Taylor 103 ulated in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which had ended the U.S.-Mexican War. Southerners opposed California’s entry into the Union as a free state, for it would give the nonslave states a majority in the U.S. Senate, then evenly divided at 15 free states and 15 slave states. They feared the new majority would allow the North to pass legislation levying a protective tariff and keeping slavery out of the territories, or maybe ending it altogether. In 1849 one-third of the Southerners in Congress signed South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun’s "Address,” which portrayed the Northwest Ordinance of 1789, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and the refusal of Northerners to return fugitive slaves as "acts of aggression” against the South. While sectionalism intensified, President Taylor insisted that because Californians had written an antislavery constitution, they should be admitted as a free state. He also believed New Mexico should obtain statehood as a way to force resolution of its border dispute with Texas. As a result, he sent agents to Santa Fe, and in short order New Mexico readied its petition to enter the Union as a free state. In December 1849 President Taylor released his annual message to Congress in which—in a passage added to answer John C. Calhoun—he warned against sectionalism and defended the Union. "Upon its preservation must depend our own happiness and that of countless generations to come,” he said. "Whatever dangers may threaten it, I shall stand by it and maintain it in its integrity to the full extent of the obligations imposed and the powers conferred upon me by the Constitution.” Taylor found enough time during the domestic crisis to negotiate the Clayton-Bulwar Treaty, in which Britain and the United States agreed never to claim exclusive control over an isthmian canal in Central America and promised to guarantee the neutrality and security of such a canal. They promised also to ensure peace in Central America and never to colonize or occupy any part of the region. The Senate passed the treaty in April by a vote of 42-10. But the domestic crisis still held center stage, and to many it looked as if the quarrel over California and New Mexico would end the Union. With the crisis worsening, Henry Clay introduced into Congress several compromise resolutions. They provided for admission of California into the Union as a free state; the organization of New Mexico as a territory, with the issue of slavery left to the residents to vote on; a resolution of the Texas–New Mexico boundary dispute; an assumption by the United States of the Texas debt; an end to the slave trade in the District of Columbia; a strong provision for the return of fugitive slaves to their owners; and a declaration that Congress lacked any authority to interfere with the slave trade among the states. The resolutions sparked a great debate led by the Senate’s aging but renowned trio of Clay, Calhoun, and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. Clay called for moderate tempers and compromise, while Calhoun insisted the South must have equal rights with the North in any territory. Webster began his speech with the eloquent words "I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American. . . . I speak today for preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause.” A Senate committee subsequently decided to combine the resolutions covering territorial organization into an omnibus bill and thus allay southern fears that Taylor would sign legislation dealing with California but veto all else. But the president opposed the compromise outright. For one, he thought that in such form it would never pass Congress; for another, he wanted New Mexico admitted as a state to resolve the slave issue and avoid compromising its boundaries. As the debate in Congress continued, Taylor concluded the South was too obstinate and its leaders too eager for secession. He was increasingly convinced he must ally with Northerners in order to save the Union. His own hardening position presented an obstacle: Any bill passed needed his signature; should he use his veto, the divisiveness in Congress assured it 104 Zachary Taylor would never be overridden. At the same time, his poor relations with Capitol Hill made it difficult for the two sides to work together. On July 4, 1850, Taylor attended an Independence Day celebration at the unfinished Washington Monument. The day was hot, and when he returned to the White House he drank iced water and chilled milk and ate cherries and perhaps some vegetables. He fell seriously ill, and on July 7 a fever wracked his body. Two days later, on July 9, he was dead from an intestinal disease. His last words were recorded as "I have always done my duty. I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me.” Clay’s resolutions, known as the Compromise of 1850, passed Congress later that year under President Millard Fillmore. Zachary Taylor’s presidency showed the dangers of inexperience in the White House in the near paralysis of government that followed the inability of Congress and the executive to cooperate or, for that matter, to even communicate. On such ground compromise over the territorial crisis nearly failed. But his presidency also displayed commitment to the Union that under a less resolute chief executive might have
collapsed in 1850.