The house had but four rooms, surrounded on all sides by a verandah, and thus in the hottest weather there was always a shady side, and in the coldest, one most sheltered; and so cozy and comfortable did the house become under the management of its new mistress, that Mrs. Taylor was most thoroughly justified in her choice by the universal commendation of the citizens of the town—that it was now the pleasantest residence in all the country round, and its inmates were probably as contented and happy as people can be.
General Taylor himself was not idle, but was kept busy visiting Fort Gibson and Fort Smith, until finally, to be near his family, was at his own request transferred to Fort Jessup, Louisiana. He bought the house selected by his family, within his military department. The domestic life of General Taylor’s family was now complete. He had performed public duties enough his friends thought, to permit him to indulge in the luxury of being left quietly at the head-quarters of a frontier department, where he could enjoy repose from severe military duties, look after his neglected private interests, and for the few years that remained live a kind of private life. Alas! how the dream was to be dissipated.
Texas was at this time a State, acting independently of Mexico, yet unacknowledged as such by the mother country. The Texans, inspired by the difficulties of their situation, and surrounded by political influence in the United States, agitated the question of coming into the Union. The result was that General Santa Anna, then President of Mexico, made preparations which contemplated the reassertion of the national government in the revolted province.
This naturally made the southern border line of Louisiana, the Sabine, an object of attack, and as General Taylor had, with the idea of being left in peaceful retirement, asked to be in command in Louisiana, he unconsciously placed himself in the very position that was to call him into a more active and important field of duty than had yet been entrusted to him.
Mrs. Taylor, meantime, painfully unconscious of the drama that was opening before her, calmly and full of content, went about her domestic duties. A garden was planted, and she cherished the first signs of the growing vegetation with almost childish delight. Her old friends among the citizens of the neighborhood made friendly visits. Miss Betty, who was now in the very perfection of her blooming womanhood, was popular with the young ladies of her age and station.
The “old General” was here and there, according to his habits; one day away attending to some military matter, then enjoying what seemed to him an endless source of interest, the examination of the workings of plantation life. He began, in fact, to assume the airs of an agriculturist; invested what means he had in a cotton farm on the Mississippi, and looked forward to the time when his income would be large and liberal for the pursuits of peace.
All this time to the south of General Taylor’s military department there were signs of trouble, and one day he received from the Adjutant-General of the Army a letter, which announced that there was great danger of a hostile incursion of Indians on the southern border of his department. The letter thus concluded: “Should the apprehended hostilities with the Indians alluded to break out, an officer of rank—probably yourself—will be sent to command the United States forces to be put in the field.”
The quiet domestic life so much desired by Mrs. Taylor was becoming a dream. The events which followed so rapidly soon placed her husband on the banks of the Sabine as commander-in-chief of the “Army of Occupation.” A succeeding order, and he invaded the disputed territory, and by one single stride rose from the comparative obscurity of a frontier fighter to be the observed of all the world, in a conflict where two Christian nations were to struggle for supremacy in an appeal to arms. The succeeding actions, that began at Palo Alto and ended at Buena Vista, made him for the time being a hero. While these events were culminating, Mrs. Taylor and Miss Betty remained in the little cottage on the banks of the Mississippi, each hour becoming objects of greater interest, and from their quietness and unobtrusive life making themselves dear to the nation.
But the applause and flattery that began to reach the inmates of the old Spanish cottage made no apparent impression. Mrs. Taylor, while her husband distinguished himself on the Rio Grande, only worked harder in her little garden, and she had no superior among the planters of the vicinity of Baton Rouge in the raising of succulent luxuries for the table, and she seemingly took more pride in showing these triumphs of her industry than she did in hearing compliments upon her husband’s growing fame. Nay, more than this, she instituted a miniature dairy, and added to her other comforts what was almost unknown at the time in the vicinity—an abundance of fresh milk and butter. It may be readily imagined that with such care and supervision the little cottage in the garrison was illustrative of domestic comfort nowhere else surpassed. Thus practically Mrs. Taylor taught the young wives of the officers residing in the barracks their duties, and prepared them by her excellent example to perform the arduous task imposed upon them as soldiers’ wives in a manner best calculated to insure their own happiness and secure honor and renown to their patriotic husbands.
But Mrs. Taylor’s usefulness did not end with the perfect performance of her household responsibilities. The town of Baton Rouge at this time had no Protestant Episcopal Church. It was a want which she, in common with other officers’ wives and some few persons in the village, felt keenly; and in her quiet, practical way, she set about meeting the demand. It was, of course, only necessary for her to designate a proper room in the garrison buildings to be used as a chapel, when it was at once prepared for that purpose. She superintended with others the labor necessary to fit up a chapel, then used her influence to secure the occasional services of a rector who resided at some distance away. Meantime her expressed wish that “the service” be regularly read was responded to, and thus was secured to Baton Rouge a commencement of a religious movement that in a few subsequent years crystallized in the building of a handsome church, and the establishment of a permanent and intelligent congregation.