Pursuing Confederate forces from Missouri into Tennessee, on May 26, 1862, Taylor wrote:

“Tha are a fighting a little every day but haven’t braught on an genral ingagement yet. We will be marched out to the line to day or tomorrow. I expect thare will be Bloody times before this fight is over…”

The land, he later added, was devastated. From Corinth, Miss., in June, he described the desolation:
“you can see a grate many houses here that you can see no body but a few blacks. Sometimes you see white wimon and children but no men an ast them whare their men are som will tel you that their men has volunteered in the rebel armey an som will say that their men was prest in the rebel armey.”

Taylor died that autumn at the Battle of Perryville.