Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/373

Rh to assail our Army of Occupation, soon reached the officers who had been left in command at our headquarters during Taylor's absence; and, in consequence of a despatch sent by express to General Wool at Parras for reinforcements, that officer immediately put his whole column in motion, and, after marching one hundred and twenty miles in four days, found himself at Agua Nueva, within twenty-one miles of Saltillo. Thus sustained, the officers in command, awaited with anxiety, the movements of the Mexican chief and the return of General Taylor.

But, in the meantime, the administration at home, seeing the inutility of continuing the attacks upon the more northern outposts of Mexico,—which it was, nevertheless, resolved to hold as indemnifying hostages, inasmuch as they were contiguous to our own soil and boundaries,—determined to strike a blow at the vitals of Mexico by seizing her principal eastern port and proceeding thence to the capital. For this purpose, General Scott, who had been set aside at the commencement of the war in consequence of a rupture between himself and the war department whilst arranging the details of the campaign,—was once more summoned into the field and appointed commander-in-chief of the American army in Mexico. Up to this period, November, 1846, large recruits of regulars and volunteers had flocked to the standard of Taylor and were stationed at various posts in the valley of the Rio Grande, under the command of Generals Butler, Worth, Patterson, Quitman and Pillow. But the project of a descent upon Vera Cruz, which was warmly advocated by General Scott, made it necessary to detach a considerable portion of these levies, and of their most efficient and best drilled members. Taylor and his subordinate commanders, were thus, placed in a mere defensive position, and that, too, at a moment when they were threatened in front by the best army that had been assembled for many a year in Mexico.

It is probable that the government of the United States, at the moment it planned this expedition to Vera Cruz and the capital, was not fully apprised of the able and efficient arrangements of Santa Anna, or imagined that he would immediately quit San Luis Potosi in order to defend the eastern access to the capital, inasmuch as it was not probable that Taylor would venture to penetrate the country with impaired forces, which, in a strictly military point of view, were not more than adequate for garrison service along an extended base of three hundred miles. But, as the sequel showed, they neither estimated properly the time that would be consumed in concentrating the forces and