subconscious, and can be observed only by its outcropping implications. Externally, he was throughout his whole life greatly influenced by the people around him. He was continually doing and saying things because these were the things to do at the time, although they were not in accord with his inner life. The fact that he detested war-and especially the Mexican War-did not prevent him from being a good soldier. He went into it from a sense of duty, and did his best.

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Taylor's army moved southward down the long axis of the land of Mexico. If the plan of campaign was to pierce the country sufficiently deep to take its capital, it was very foolishly conceived, for the distance from the Rio Grande to Mexico City is six hundred and fifty miles.

But it appears that the Polk administration did not really contemplate any such complicated operations. It was believed by the President and his advisers that if Mexico were invaded from the north the Mexicans would quit fighting after they had lost one or two battles.

In September Taylor's army arrived before Monterey, a stone-built city of sixteen thousand inhabitants, after having marched two hundred miles from Matamoras. The place was taken by the Americans in a series of desperate attacks. Men fought in the streets and on the flat roofs of the houses.

Grant's place was in the rear of the army with the wagon trains, but he did not remain there long. The sharp rattle of gunfire came back to the distant teamsters' camp like the popping of firecrackers, and the entire quartermaster's department stood on a little hill, looking and listening. After a while Grant turned over the command to a subordinate and rode to the scene of battle. Before the day was over he distinguished himself by a helter-skelter ride through bullet-swept streets to bring up a supply of ammunition.

His exploit was talked about for a few days and then forgotten. There were so many daring ventures in men's memories that a perilous ride could not hold the attention very long.

One result of the battle of Monterey was to add stature and muscle to the infantile Zachary Taylor myth, which was already thriving in the nursery of heroes. Songs in praise of "Old Rough and Ready" were bawled in streets and barrooms, and much liquor was drunk to the continuation of his good health. Astute people who spoke in whispers and communicated gossip as if they were revealing the Egyptian mysteries predicted that the next President's name would begin with a T.

The war had been conceived by the Democrats, and the Democratic administration was not at all pleased with the soaring fame of Taylor, popular hero of the Whigs.

President Polk reflected moodily on this turn of fate, and resolved to do something that would divert public attention from Taylor and his achievements. If he had been a shrewd statesman he could have turned Taylor's victories to the advantage of his administration, but he was a second-rate politician, simmering in jealousy, and the scheme he evolved for putting Taylor on the shelf was simply a cheap political trick.

At the beginning of the war both General Taylor and General Winfield Scott had proposed to invade Mexico by the way of Vera Cruz. The distance from the sea to the Mexican capital is about two hundred and sixty miles by that route, against six hundred miles, or more, by the route across the Texas border. It was the only sound strategic plan, but Polk had disregarded it because he did not think it necessary. The war would come to an end in a short time, anyway, he thought, so why go to the trouble of sending an army by sea to Vera Cruz?

Now the idea was revived, and General Scott was selected by Polk to command the new expedition. Taylor was left

in command in northern Mexico, but two-thirds of his troops were ordered back to Matamoras, to take ship there for Vera Cruz. Among the regiments that marched back was the Fourth Infantry, with Grant and his train of wagons toiling along in its rear.

Everybody realized that Taylor had been neatly shelved. The war's line of force had been changed in direction abruptly, and Taylor was supposed to be henceforth only a spectator. But the unexpected is the essence of all history. . . and the unexpected happened.

A letter to Taylor in which the new plan of campaign was set forth fell into the hands of Santa Anna-the Mexican commander-in-chief-through the capture of a messenger. All at once Santa Anna had the key to the situation. He saw that the real fighting was to take place between Vera Cruz and Mexico City, and not in the north. He knew that Taylor had barely five thousand men at Monterey, while the Mexican army in front of him had grown to fifteen thousand. Scott had not yet arrived at Vera Cruz, and could not possibly land there for some time. Santa Anna made up his mind to crush Taylor at once, and then swing his army a thousand miles south, by forced marches, to face Scott when he reached Vera Cruz. This brilliant plan had a touch of strategic genius, and it would have succeeded if Santa Anna's army had not been composed of such wretchedly poor human material. His soldiers were half-breed conscripts, driven to the army in gangs. They had no interest in the war, nor much conception of what it was about.

With this rag-tag army he met Taylor at Buena Vista, not far from Monterey, and there occurred the most hotly contested battle of the war, in which the Americans lost one-fifth of their number in killed and wounded. But the Mexican loss was even greater. Santa Anna's army was terribly beaten, notwithstanding its immense numerical superiority.

Taylor was the outstanding hero of the great day at Buena

Vista, but Jefferson Davis also won renown. At a critical moment the Mexicans had attempted to break through the American line. Davis formed his regiment in the shape of a triangle, open at the wide end, and received their onslaught in the hollow part of his V-shaped formation. The Mexican assault wilted under a fire that came from both sides as well as from the front.

The events that led to the battle of Buena Vista provide a fine example of the futility of human foresight. The administration had carefully insulated Zachary Taylor, and had done it so shrewdly that nobody could pick any flaws in the technique of the operation. Then, unexpectedly, at the moment of his official decapitation, he won the most dramatic battle of the war, and became a living image of spectacular

success.

The country went mad with enthusiasm when it learned that five thousand Americans had beaten fifteen thousand Mexicans. The war grew enormously in favor, even among those who were opposed to it on principle at the start. It did not seem possible that anything so successful could be wrong. Manifest Destiny was a high-riding star.

The long arm of Buena Vista reaches far into history. It made Zachary Taylor a President of the United States; and it was unquestionably a deciding factor in the deliberations of the Confederate Congress when that body elected Jefferson Davis to the leadership of the Confederacy.

Through his single military exploit Davis acquired an absurdly exaggerated reputation. As its echoes came back to him he began to look upon himself as a great strategist, though he was, in fact, no strategist at all, and his military opinions were usually faulty. The ghost of Buena Vista hovered over the bloody Confederate battlefields, interfering with the plans of able commanders, and contributing eventually to the many causes that led the Confederacy to its downfall.

We shall now leave Old Rough and Ready, with the wreath of laurel on his brow, and turn to Winfield Scott and his army. The American expedition landed among the sand dunes of Vera Cruz with the bands blaring out "Yankee Doodle" as the troops floundered through the surf. The Mexican army, such as it was, stayed behind the walls of the town and made romantic resolutions to die in the last ditch. Across the level sea lands the Americans heard the clamorous ringing of church bells, calling the inhabitants to arms and prayer. Santa Anna, though beaten at Buena Vista, was coming hot-foot from the north. If the commander at Vera Cruz could only hold out until his chief arrived the Mexicans would have Scott between two fires.

But neither prayers nor arms were of avail; the Mexicans could not keep up a resistance long enough for Santa Anna to get there. On March 27, 1847, the town surrendered after Scott had battered his way through the walls. Despite the fierce resolutions hardly anybody died in the last ditch, though a few misguided patriots fired from second-story windows after the surrender and were shot for their excess of zeal.

Grant was there, with his mules and wagons, on the sandy plain where the army camped. He took no part in the military operations. The time of the siege was spent by him in getting supplies from the vessels and organizing the domestic arrangements of the Fourth Infantry for the march to Mexico City.

Scott left a small garrison to hold the forts in the harbor and got away from Vera Cruz as quickly as he could, for the yellow fever season was coming on. He had less than twelve thousand men, and though more volunteer regiments were on their way, he was too much afraid of pestilence to wait for them.

To reach Mexico City he had to march uphill for more than two hundred miles, until the army stood eleven thousand feet