Anecdotes and Letters of Zachary Taylor

The book opens with a brief biography of Zachary Taylor, from his birth in 1784 to his nomination for the presidency in 1848.  It offers a thumbnail sketch of his involvement in the War of 1812, his time on the frontier, his success during the Seminole War in Florida, and finally his four victories (Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterrey, and Buena Vista) in the Mexican War.  As it was published prior to the 1848 election, he was not yet president though he was the Whig nominee.

The book then becomes a series of vignettes that detail events in the Mexican-American War.  Most of them detail incidents that occurred in the northern theater where Taylor was in command.  However, many of them cover events that happened during General Winfield Scott's campaign from Vera Cruz to Mexico City.

The book then concludes with a series of letters from Taylor to his various supporters throughout the country in the run-up to the 1848 election.  Early letters proclaim his willingness to stand for election but humbly submitting that others must be better suited to the task.  In later letters, he offers his opinions on issues of the day and shows a reversal in his desire that Henry Clay should be the Whig candidate.

Though filled with interesting events from the war, the book has no narrative.  In his two previous books, vignettes would appear at the end of the chronological narrative, adding interesting events that were coincident with the narrative.  Here the vignettes are a hodgepodge, not offered chronologically or even organized by region.  One might detail something that happened on the Rio Grande in 1846 while the next mentions something about the Battle of Cerro Gordo in 1847.  Also peculiar, the book is authored by Tom Owens, the Bee Hunter.  The Bee Hunter was a humorous tale written by Thomas Bangs Thorpe about a man, Tom Owens, who was at the top of his game in the sport of hunting bees.  This seems a strange book in which to credit it to his fictional hero.

This is the weakest of Thorpe's books covering the Mexican-American War.  Occasionally entertaining and frequently interesting, it lacks anything to make one turn to the next page.  As with his other books, this is long out of copyright and can be downloaded.  Not for everyone.