Background
Richard Scott Taylor was born in 1826 at "Springfields, " the family estate near Louisville, Ky. He was the only son of Zachary and Margaret Mackall (Smith) Taylor.
Richard Scott Taylor was born in 1826 at "Springfields, " the family estate near Louisville, Ky. He was the only son of Zachary and Margaret Mackall (Smith) Taylor.
After spending much of his boyhood at frontier camps, he was tutored by a certain Brooks at Lancaster, Massachussets He was sent to Europe, probably in 1841, and studied at Edinburgh and in France. In 1843 he entered Harvard College but soon transferred to Yale, where he graduated in 1845.
In July, 1846, he visited General Taylor's camp at Matamoras, but rheumatism forced him to seek relief at Arkansas and Virginia springs. After managing his father's Mississippi cotton plantation, 1848-49, he established "Fashion, " a sugar plantation in Saint Charles Parish, La. There he collected a valuable library, studied the works of great military masters, and read widely in English and French literature.
As chairman of the committee on federal relations in the state Senate, where he served from 1856 to 1861, he reported the bill to call a convention which assembled in 1861. He was elected a delegate to that body, voted for secession, and as chairman of the committee on military and naval affairs urged preparation for war. Appointed colonel of the 9th Louisiana Infantry, mustered into service July 6, he hastened to Virginia but arrived too late to participate in the Confederate victory at Bull Run.
On October 21, 1861, he was appointed brigadier-general by President Jefferson Davis, and served in the Valley campaign under "Stonewall" Jackson. As part of Jackson's command he joined Lee at Richmond, and, although prostrated by illness during the Seven Days' battles, he directed his troops from an ambulance.
In July 1862 Taylor was promoted major-general and assigned command of the District of West Louisiana. Avoiding drawn battles, as his men were greatly out-numbered, he made numerous surprise attacks, captured arms, ammunition, and medical stores, and destroyed Federal gunboats. On April 8-9, 1864, he stopped Nathaniel P. Banks's Red River campaign by decisive battles against great odds at Pleasant Hill and Mansfield (Sabine Crossroads), but was prevented from following up his victory by what he regarded as the stupid policy of the departmental commander, Edmund Kirby-Smith. In spirited letters to his superior officer he asked to be relieved of his command. After brief residence with his family at Natchitoches, he was promoted lieutenant-general on August 15, 1864, and assigned to the Department of East Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama; three months later the command of Gen. John Bell Hood's defeated army also devolved upon him. Prompt and vigorous action was insufficient to overcome demoralization, desertion, and fraudulent practice, and on May 4, 1865, he surrendered the last Confederate army east of the Mississippi to Gen. Edward R. S. Canby at Citronelle, Ala.
Taylor's estate had been confiscated during the war, and after its close he divided his time between New Orleans and New York. He visited Washington frequently, labored to secure release of imprisoned Confederates, and exerted some influence upon President Johnson's Louisiana policy, though he failed to persuade Grant to withdraw Federal support from the Kellogg-Packard régime. In May 1873 he sailed for Europe and was cordially received in England, France, and Germany. In his later years he served as trustee of the Peabody Education Fund for promotion of education in the South. He died of dropsy in 1879 at the home of a New York friend, Col. S. L. M. Barlow. His reminiscences, Destruction and Reconstruction (1879), parts of which appeared in the North American Review, January-April 1878, reveal literary ability of a high order. His pen portraits of Civil War characters, whether Union or Confederate, are unusually fair; his discussion of the Reconstruction period is less bitter than one might expect.
Originally a Whig, Taylor became a Democrat in the fifties, attended the Charleston convention in 1860, and sought to prevent a disruption of his party.
He was a member of Skull and Bones, Yale's social club.
In February 1851 he was married to Louise Marie Myrthé Bringier (d. 1875); of their five children, two died of scarlet fever during the Civil War.