Richard Taylor (General)
Richard Taylor (born January 27, 1826 in Louisville , Kentucky , † April 12, 1879 in New York City ) was an American politician and lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War .
Life
Richard Taylor was the only son of Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Taylor , later hero of the Mexican-American War and US President and Margaret Taylor . Without having acquired an academic title, he finished his studies at Yale University in 1845 and accompanied his father as his father's secretary in the war against Mexico. He then settled in Louisiana as a planter. There he was also politically active; from 1855 to 1861 he was a member of the Louisiana Senate .
When the Civil War broke out, he took command of the 9th Louisiana Infantry Regiment. Promoted to brigadier general, he was shortly thereafter given command of a brigade with which he served under General Thomas Jonathan Jackson and Richard Stoddert Ewell in the Shenandoah Valley and during the Seven Day Battle off Richmond , Virginia .
In July 1862 he was promoted to major general and assigned to the west, where he took command of the western Louisiana military district. In the spring of 1864, despite a defeat in the Battle of Pleasant Hill, he defeated Nathaniel Prentiss Banks on his Red River campaign . Taylor was prevented from a major pursuit by his superior Edmund Kirby Smith , as he wanted to turn to US General Frederick Steele in Arkansas . Kirby Smith and Taylor fell out over the dispute, and Taylor asked for a new command shortly thereafter. He was appointed general lieutenant (besides the cavalry Wade Hampton III. , And Nathan Bedford Forrest was he the only Confederate without military training, which reached this rank) and gave him the Military District Alabama , Mississippi and East Louisiana.
With this defense area, which included the cavalry of Forrest and the garrison of Mobile , Alabama under Dabney Herndon Maury , he capitulated on May 4, 1865 in Alabama to US General Edward Richard Sprigg Canby .
After the war he stood up for his former brother-in-law Jefferson Davis (Taylor's sister had died in 1835 three months after her marriage to Davis), who was imprisoned in Fort Monroe , and returned to Louisiana, where he lived in New Orleans . Taylor continued his political engagement after the war. He died on a trip to New York on April 12, 1879.
literature
- T. Michael Parrish: Richard Taylor. Soldier Prince of Dixie. Chapel Hill, NC 1992.
- Jeffrey S. Prushankin: Crisis in Confederate Command. Edmund Kirby Smith, Richard Taylor, and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi . Baton Rouge, LA 2005.
Autobiography
- Richard Taylor: Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War Publisher: D. Appleton and Co, New York 1879. New edition: BiblioLife 2008. ISBN 978-1-4375-3505-1
Web links
- Richard Taylor in the database of Find a Grave (English)
- Biography Richard Taylor 1826–1879
- Lieutenant General Richard Taylor . Source: The Texas Handbook
- BIOGRAPHY Lieutenant General Richard Taylor in Confederate Military History
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Taylor, Richard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American politician and southern general in the American Civil War |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 27, 1826 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | near Louisville , Kentucky |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 12, 1879 |
| Place of death | New York City |