author
Richard Taylor
1826–1879
Remembered as a sharp, plainspoken memoirist of the Civil War, this American military writer turned personal experience into one of the era’s notable firsthand accounts. He was also the son of President Zachary Taylor, a connection that placed him close to some of the most dramatic events of 19th-century America.
1 Audiobook
Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War
by Richard Taylor
About the author
Born in Kentucky in 1826, he was the only son of Zachary Taylor, who later became the 12th president of the United States. He studied at Harvard before graduating from Yale in 1845, then built his life in Louisiana, where he became a planter and entered state politics.
He is best known historically for his service as a Confederate general during the American Civil War. After the war, he wrote Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War, published in 1879, a memoir noted for its direct style and close-up view of military campaigns and the turbulent years that followed.
He died in New York City in 1879. For readers today, his work offers a vivid window into the way one prominent Southern participant understood the war and its aftermath, even as it also reflects the limits and loyalties of its author’s point of view.