Lieutenant-General Richard Scott "Dick" Taylor (January 27, 1826 – April 12, 1879) was an American planter, politician, military historian, and Confederate general. Following the outbreak of the American Civil War, Taylor joined the Confederate States Army, serving first as a brigade commander in Virginia, and later as an army commander in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. Taylor commanded the District of West Louisiana and was responsible for successfully opposing United States troops invading upper northwest Louisiana during the Red River Campaign of 1864. He was the only son of Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States. After the war and Reconstruction, Taylor published a memoir about his experiences. Early years Richard Scott Taylor was born in 1826 at Springfield, his family's plantation near Louisville, Kentucky, to Zachary Taylor, a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army at the time, and Margaret Mackall (Smith) Taylor. He was named after his paternal grandfather, Richard Lee Taylor, a Virginian who had served in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Richard Taylor, nicknamed Dick, had five older sisters, two of whom died in childhood before he was born. Three lived to adulthood: Ann Mackall Taylor, Sarah Knox Taylor, and Mary Elizabeth Taylor. The children spent much of their early lives on the American frontier, as their father was a career military officer and commanded frontier forts. All the family lived with him at these posts. As a youth, Richard was sent to private schools in Kentucky and Massachusetts. After starting college studies at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Taylor completed them at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, where he graduated in 1845. He was a member of Skull and Bones, Yale's social club. He received no scholastic honors, as he spent the majority of his time reading books on classical and military history. In the beginning of the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), Taylor visited his father at the Mexican town of Matamoros in July 1846. Reportedly he volunteered to serve as his father's aide-de-camp. Having to leave the war because of rheumatoid arthritis, the younger Taylor agreed to manage the family cotton plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi. In 1850, he persuaded his father (then serving as 12th President after being elected in 1848) to purchase Fashion, a large sugar cane plantation in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. After his father's sudden death in July 1850, Taylor inherited the sugar property. On February 10, 1851, Richard Taylor married