Believing Taylor the easier to handle, the Whig managers fixed upon him, although, having passed the larger part of his sixty-four years with the army, he had never voted. Indeed, he had always expressed an aversion to office-holding, and, when approached on the subject of the Presidency, met the overture with frank disfavor, declaring that he had neither the capacity nor the experience needed for such a position. But his “availability” overcame the force of his protests, and the Whigs won with him a sweeping victory at the polls. There is pathos in the story of the break-up of the pleasant home in Baton Rouge, and the reluctant removal of the family to Washington, taking with them only a faithful negro servant, a favorite dog, and “Old Whitey,” the horse the General had ridden through the Mexican war. Taylor was with difficulty dissuaded from his purpose of imitating his military predecessors and riding “Old Whitey” either to or from the Capitol on inauguration day. What his friends most feared was his loss of dignity in the eyes of the crowd, for his legs were so short that, in certain emergencies, an orderly had to lift one of them over his horse’s flanks whenever he mounted or dismounted. Taylor was as simple a soul as Harrison. His unostentatious ways in the army had led the soldiers to dub him “Old Rough and Ready,” and this title stuck to him always afterward. One of his favorite amusements was to walk about Washington, chatting informally with people he met and watching whatever was going on in the streets. His love of comfort was such that he could never be induced to wear clothes that fitted him, but his suits were always a size or two larger than his measure, and these, with a black silk hat set far back on his head, made him recognizable at any distance. His message at the opening of Congress contained one announcement as voluminous as his costume: “We are at peace with all the nations of the world, and the rest of mankind.” The bull was discovered too late to prevent its going out in the original print; but in a revised edition the sentence was made to end: “And seek to maintain our cherished relations of amity with them.”