The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address | Page 6

have seen,-- We drink the same stream and view the same sun, And run the same course our fathers have run.
The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink; To the life we are clinging our fathers would cling; But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing.
They loved, but the story we cannot unfold; They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will come; They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.
They died, ay! they died: and we things that are now, Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow, Who make in their dwelling a transient abode, Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.
Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, We mingle together in sunshine and rain; And the smiles and the tears, the song and the dirge, Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,-- Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICE OF GENERAL ZACHARY TAYLOR

EULOGY
PRONOUNCED BY HON. ABRAHAM LINCOLN ON THE LIFE AND SERVICES OF THE LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
General Zachary Taylor, the eleventh elected President of the United States, is dead. He was born, November 2, 1784, in Orange County, Virginia; and died July 9, 1850, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, at the White House in Washington City.
He was the second son of Richard Taylor, a Colonel in the Army of the Revolution. His youth was passed among the pioneers of Kentucky, whither his parents emigrated soon after his birth; and where his taste for military life, probably inherited, was greatly stimulated. Near the commencement of our last war with Great Britain, he was appointed, by President Jefferson, a Lieutenant in the Seventh Regiment of Infantry. During the war, he served under General Harrison in his North-Western campaign against the Indians; and, having been promoted to a Captaincy, was entrusted with the defense of Fort Harrison, with fifty men, half of them unfit for duty. A strong party of Indians, under the Prophet, brother of Tecumseh, made a midnight attack upon the Fort; but Taylor, though weak in his force, and without preparation, was resolute and on the alert; and after a battle, which lasted till after daylight, completely repulsed them. Soon after, he took a prominent part in the expedition under Major-General Hopkins against the Prophet's town; and on his return, found a letter from President Madison, who had succeeded Mr. Jefferson, conferring on him a Major's brevet for his gallant defense of Fort Harrison.
After the close of the British war, he remained in the frontier service of the West, till 1818. He was then transferred to the Southern frontier, where he remained, most of the time, in active service till 1826. In 1819, and during his service in the South, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1826 he was again sent to the North-West, where he continued until 1836. In 1832 he was promoted to the rank of Colonel. In 1836 he was ordered to the South to engage in what is well known as the Florida War. In the autumn of 1837 he fought and conquered in the memorable Battle of Okeechobee, one of the most desperate struggles known to the annals of Indian warfare. For this he was honored with the rank of Brigadier-General; and in 1838 was appointed to succeed General Jessup in command of the forces in Florida. In 1841 he was ordered to Fort Gibson to take command of the Second Military Department of the United States; and in September, 1844, was directed to hold the troops between the Red River and the Sabine in readiness to march as might be indicated by the charge of the United States, near Texas. In 1845 his forces were concentrated at Corpus Christi.
In obedience to orders, in March, 1846, he planted his troops on the Rio Grande opposite Matamoros. Soon after this, and near this place, a small detachment of General Taylor's forces, under Captain Thornton, was cut to pieces by a party of Mexicans. Open hostilities being thus commenced, and General Taylor being constantly menaced by Mexican forces vastly superior to his own in numbers, his position became exceedingly critical. Having erected a fort, he might defend himself against great odds while he could remain within it; but his provisions had failed, and there was no supply nearer than Point Isabel, between which and the new fort the country was open to, and full of, armed