John Taylor of Caroline - Career

Career

Taylor was orphaned as a small child. He was adopted by a maternal uncle, Edmund Pendleton, a leading Virginia politician, lawyer and judge. He attended Donald Robertson's Academy with fellow students: James Madison (a distant cousin), and George Rogers Clark. Taylor attended the College of William and Mary and then studied law at his uncle's office. He served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, rising to the rank of colonel, and serving under Patrick Henry and General William Woodford, and leading a regiment under the Marquis de Lafayette.

After the war Taylor lived as a lawyer, planter and part-time politician, serving in the Virginia legislature and appointed to complete three unexpired terms in the U.S. Senate. In 1783, he married his cousin, Lucy Penn, daughter of John Penn of North Carolina, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was a member of the Tertium Quids who believed that Jefferson and Madison had sacrificed true republican principles. While the Quids opposed some of Jefferson's policies, Taylor's judgment of Jefferson had been generous. In 1804, Taylor issued a pamphlet entitled, "A Defence of the Measures of the Administration of Thomas Jefferson." Jefferson and Taylor had long agreed on many things. In fact, from Jefferson's perspective, they agreed on almost everything. James Madison and John Marshall were Taylor's most prominent adversaries, as they "distorted the record in an effort to justify a more energetic central authority." In 1808, Taylor opposed the election of Madison as President and supported James Monroe instead.

Taylor served as the first president of the Virginia Agricultural Society and was a lifetime member of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture.