John Taylor, a common sentinel devoted to awakening an army

John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia (b. 1753) is not among the Pantheon of American Founders, but he merits remembering. Multiple exchanges of correspondence between Taylor and George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are found in their Papers. Scholarly books by Garrett Sheldon and C. William Hill, Jr., document Taylor's role in early American political history. In his 70 years, Taylor was many things: a lawyer who graduated from William and Mary College in 1770; a Colonel of Calvary in the American Army during the Revolutionary War; a farmer and published agriculturalist; a politician serving on-and-off in the U.S. Senate representing Virginia; a lifelong reader that included Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli; a husband and father of three. Somehow, amongst all that, he found time to write.