HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. CHAPTER XVIII. ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES K. POLK. SECTION II. THE MEXICAN WAR. MAY, 1846-SEPTEMBER, 1847. OUR attention now turns to the military narrative of the Mexican war,—a contest in which it may truly be said that the invading republic never lost a battie, nor made 1846-47. a serious military blunder, but bore the stars and stripes steadily forward from victory to victory. And yet we citizens of the superior republic were forced to own in the end that in this war, as in most others we ever undertook, the cost had not been prudently calculated. We had to admit that our enemy fought bravely and stubbornly, as patriots will fight to defend their native land; and the stern though futile effort of the Mexican people, under every disadvantage, to preserve intact their dominions could not but move the conquering invaders to respect and then pity them. To the first miscarriage, politically speaking, of this unequal conflict of arms, we have adverted already: * that the glory of conquest redounded in the end, not to the VOL. V. - 1 *See vol. iv. p. 541. administration, nor to the party of Mexican dismemberment, but to their political opponents. True is it that of American citizen volunteers who enrolled for this war, nearly two thirds came from States south of Mason and Dixon's line, — Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee leading in numbers, while the more populous New England States, New York, and Pennsylvania, were outstripped in zeal by Ohio and Illinois and the thinly populated north-western frontier, whose troops hastened by such transports as they could obtain down the broad Mississippi to join their Southern comrades at New Orleans, the general rendezvous of the American forces, thence seeking together the common field of fame.* True is it that Democratic colonels and generals fought bravely in the subordinate commands, many of them imbued deeply with the aggressive proslavery spirit of the times, but all intent upon adding new lustre to the army of the Great Republic. But accident and opportunity gave the chief military renown of the war to the Whigs. The two great commanders and victorious leaders, towards whom were drawn in succession the public attention and solicitude, were Whigs in politics, so far as they were politicians at all, - Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. Each of these men proved fully competent to his responsibility in spite of provoking obstacles. Each enlisted that profound gratitude of the American nation, which success in the profession of arms will best secure so long as wars are found essential. The administration of a Democratic President, balked in every effort to create a commander of its own party hue, could do nothing, as the war developed, but turn from the one hero to the other, in deference to a public sentiment it dared not disregard, hoping that each would destroy the other's prestige. All roads to American eminence lead to the Presidency. In honest Zachary Taylor the Mexican war raised up eventually a Presidential candidate of irresistible strength with the people, under whose standard Polk's *For statistics see 74 Niles, 193. The total number of volunteers in the Mexican war is here stated at 65,349. 1846-47. SCOTT AND TAYLOR. 3 party was driven ignominiously from power. Scott, less successful in winning honors of which popular suffrage was the criterion, it entrenched securely as the chief soldier of his time in America; and when, some thirteen years after this war, designs of Southern domination, such as bred this Mexican conquest, had worked out their full mischief to this republic in threatened disunion, his name and fame gave to the national cause incalculable strength in the first dark days of peril. Two distinguished commanders of kindred politics, natives of America, born in the same illustrious mother State, and serving as soldiers under the same stars and stripes, could hardly have been more unlike in personal traits and military methods. Winfield Scott was the outranking officer, being already commander-in-chief of our army at the time when war was declared; and he has given himself full credit in his late memoirs for concurring in the detail of Taylor, a subordinate officer, to command at Corpus Christi when matters became critical with Mexico.* Zachary Taylor was at that time a brigadier-general by brevet, but in lineal rank no more than a colonel. Entering at early manhood into the military service of the United States, among the regulars, he had won gradual renown as a brave, efficient, and trustworthy officer; and yet his record was by no means distinguished. Once he had sturdily repelled the Indian chief Tecumseh while in command of a frontier fort at the northwest; but that same war of 1812 brought him no such conspicuous laurels as those of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane to the gallant Scott; while his long record in the ensuing years of peace showed nothing more memorable than sharing with others of our generals in the baffled pursuit of the Florida Seminoles. Yet of these two Virginians, so unequal in distinction when Texas entered the American Union, Taylor was somewhat the older, being at the outbreak of the Mexican war, in fact, full sixty-one years of age, though of sound health * Scott's Autobiography, c. 26. |