--Probably no military man in the late
United States so well understood the character of the volunteer soldier as the late
President Taylor, or ‘"Old Rough and Ready,"’ as he was familiarly known in the camp.
His best friends will not claim for him that the Presidency was his proper shere; he did not claim it himself; he never sought that office, never desired it; and, we have very little doubt, preferred the grave which relieved him from it to its ephemeral honors, its perplexing cares, and painful responsibilities.
But as an American soldier, no man, since the days of
Andrew Jackson, has touched such deep springs of admiration and confidence in the
American heart.
A veteran officer of regulars, he was also a practical and prosperous
Louisiana planter, who had mingled freely with the world outside the army, and who throughly understood human nature and the management of mankind.
Probably no two officers in the
American or any other service differed more widely in their personal characteristics than Wingfield Scoot and
Zachary Taylor. The first was a mere soldier, devoted to pomp and display from his youth; reckless in incurring debts and more than suspected of embezzlement of public money; luxurious, extravagant, egotistical, self-indulgent, irritable, and insubordinate to both military and civil superiors.
Gen. Taylor was one of the simplest of mankind in all his habits; the most modest and unpretending of men; frugal in his mode of life; economical in his expenditures; owing no man anything; and with a character so self-poised and self-possessed that it commanded the respect of all with whom he came in contact. --
Scott was, in a word, a fool, and
Taylor a man of sense.
As a soldier,
Scott assumes to be the ‘"great
Captain of the age,"’ but except in his Falstaffian proportions, he has never made good the pretension.
Taylor, in the humility of his nature, would have resented as an insult the application of such an enlogium to himself, and yet he had better claims to it than
General Scott. He succeeded in
Florida when
Scott had notoriously failed, and he accomplished with volunteers what
Scott would never so much as attempt without regulars.
If
Scott had been at
Buena Vista, he would have retired, as he advised
Taylor to do, after he had deprived him of his regular soldiers.
But old
Zack understood the volunteer character and capacity, stood his ground, defeated five times his numbers, and thus made the march of
Scott to
Mexico an easy consummation of a conquest already achieved.
No mere martinet could ever have gained the
battle of Buena Vista; none but a man who combined military knowledge with a knowledge of volunteers and the proper mode of handling them.
Old
Zack was the model of a chieftain of Southern volunteers.
We want no mere soldier on the one hand, nor a mere politician on the other.
We want a regularly educated military man who can bring all the aids of martial science and training to bear upon the objects he has in view, and who has also the genius to comprehend the peculiar qualities and aptitude of Southern volunteers, of gentlemen who are not and who cannot be made regulars, and ought not to be made so if they could, for they have proved in this war their superiority in fighting qualities to the best regulars on this continent.
