Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 1.djvu/227

198 inimitably about the great men he had met in Europe, or criticizing and comparing the best authors of French prose, His foibles particularly a sensitiveness of temper, an ambition for the Presidency and a fondness for relieving heavy thought with light words, as Marcy did with light snuff were numerous; the openness of his large and generous nature, superior to the prudence of smaller minds, prevented his concealing them; certain peculiarities of language and manner, from a delicacy about commas to a fondness for literary effects, were easily ridiculed; and in non-military affairs his indiscretion was now and then glaring; but he must be described emphatically as a soldier, a gentleman, a character, a great general and a great man.

Distrusting Taylor, and profoundly alarmed about the situation on the frontier, Polk sent for Scott on May 13, and conferred upon him verbally the chief command in Mexico; yet, While admitting that he saw proofs of experience in the Generals remarks, he pronounced him too scientific and visionary," as the master of a difficult business must always appear to the tyro. Probably he knew that a man could not become a soldier overnight, as he could become a militia colonel or a statesman, orin Santa Anna's opiniona professor of jurisprudence; but he believed that, should fighting really need to be done, even an improvised army would make "a brisk and a short war of it, as the administration paper neatly said, and, if necessary, dictate a peace in the Halls of the Montezumas." Under circumstances like these prevision and science appeared rather superfluous. The only things needful were to march now and triumph to-morrow.

Scott, however, felt that waging war might involve military operations He undertook to prove by elaborate calculations that the greater part of the volunteers could not at the best arrive on the Rio Grande before the rst week in August; and, since that would be the rainy season, when the hoofs of mules and horses would be unfit for hard use, and various other difficulties would arise, he recommended that most of the new troops, after remaining under instruction at salubrious points in the United States during the summer, should be placed upon that river by September 25, so as to make, with the volunteers and regulars already there, 25,000 or possibly