Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/205

Rh and nothing more or less. I am not responsible for the facts of the case, only for the correct statement thereof. There have been men who were not disposed to do him justice; there were men enough to flatter and overpraise him while alive, and there will probably be enough of such now that he is dead. Much official panegyric has there been already, and much more is in prospect. I think I need not be called on for any contribution of that sort. I wish to weigh him in an even balance, neither praising nor blaming without cause. To eulogize is one thing; to deal justly, another and quite different.

was born on the 24th of November, 1784, in Orange county, Virginia. His father, Richard Taylor, was a soldier during a part of the Revolutionary War, had a colonel’s commission in 1779, and appears to have been a valuable officer and a worthy man. In 1785 he removed to Kentucky, where he resided until his death. He was a farmer, a man of property and influence in Ken- tucky, then a new country. He was one of the framers of the Constitution of that State ; several times in the Legislature, and the first collector of the port of Louisville, then a port of entry. Zachary, the third son, followed the business of farming until he was more than twenty- three years of age. During his childhood he received such an education as you can imagine in a new and wild country like Kentucky sixty years ago. However, it is said his father took great pains with his education, and he enjoyed the instruction of a schoolmaster from Connecticut, who is still living. Hence it is plain the best part of his education must have come, not from the schoolmaster, but from the farm, the woods, and the connection with his parents and their associates. What a man learns at school, even in Boston, is but a small part of his education. In General Taylor's case, it is probable that things had much more to do with his culture than words. Men nursed on Greek and Latin would probably have called him an uneducated man ; with equal justice he might call many a scholar an uneducated man. To speak and write with grammatical accuracy is by no means the best test of education.

Fondness for a military life is natural in a man born and