GENERAL ORDERS, No. 21.
WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE,
Washington July 11, 1850.
I. The following order of the President of the United States announces to the Army the lamented death of the illustrious General Zachary Taylor, late President of the United States:
WAR DEPARTMENT, July 11, 1850.
The President of the United States with profound sorrow announces to the Army, the Navy, and Marine Corps the death of Zachary Taylor, late President of the United States. He died at the Executive Mansion on the night of the 9th instant at half-past 10 o'clock.
His last public appearance was in participating in the ceremonies of our national anniversary at the base of the monument now rearing to the memory of Washington. His last official act was to affix his signature to the convention recently concluded between the United States and Great Britain.
The vigor of a constitution strong by nature and confirmed by active and temperate habits had in later years become impaired by the arduous toils and exposures of his military life.
Solely engrossed in maintaining the honor and advancing the glory of his country, in a career of forty years in the Army of the United States he rendered himself signal and illustrious. An unbroken current of success and victory, terminated by an achievement unsurpassed in our annals, left nothing to be accomplished for his military fame.
His conduct and courage gave him this career of unexampled fortune, and with the crowning virtues of moderation and humanity under all circumstances, and especially in the moment of victory, revealed to his countrymen those great and good qualities which induced them unsolicited to call him from his high military command to the highest civil office of honor and trust in the Republic; not that he desired to be first, but that he was felt to be worthiest.
The simplicity of his character, the singleness of his purpose, the elevation and patriotism of his principles, his moral courage, his justice, magnanimity and benevolence, his wisdom, moderation, and power of command, while they have endeared him to the heart of the nation, add to the deep sense of the national calamity in the loss of a Chief Magistrate whom death itself could not appall in the consciousness of "having always done his duty."