the night the wounded were removed to Saltillo and every preparation made to receive the enemy should he again attack our position. Seven fresh companies were drawn from the

MILITARY MONUMENT

Erected in Kentucky A. D. 1850, in Frankfort Cemetery. Around it is the "Bivouac of the Dead"

town and Brigadier General Marshall, who had made a forced march from the Rinconada with a reinforcement of Kentucky cavalry, and four heavy guns, under Captain Prentiss, First Artillery, was near at hand, when it was discovered that the enemy had abandoned his position during the night. Our scouts soon ascertained that he had fallen

back on Agua Nueva. The great disparity of numbers and the exhaustion of our troops, rendered it inexpedient and hazardous to attempt pursuit. A staff officer was despatched to Santa Anna to negotiate an exchange of prisoners, which was satisfactorily completed on the following day. Our own dead were collected and buried and the Mexican wounded, of whom a large number had been left on the field, were removed to Saltillo and made as comfortable as circumstatces would permit. *

*

"On the 27th, our troops resumed their former camp at Agua Nueva, the enemy's rearguard evacuating the place as we approached, leaving a considerable number of wounded. It was my intention to beat up his quarters at Encarnacion early the next morning, but upon examination, the weak condition of the cavalry horses rendered it unadvisable to attempt so long a march without water. A command was finally despatched to Encarnacion on the Ist of March, under Colonel Belknap. Some two hundred wounded and about sixty Mexican soldiers were found there, the enemy having passed on in the direction of Matahuala, with greatly reduced numbers and suffering much from hunger. The dead and dying were strewn along the road and crowded the buildings of the haciendas.

"The American force engaged in the action of Buena Vista is shown by the reports to have been 334 officers and 4,425 men, exclusive of the small force left in and near Saltillo. Of this number, two squadrons of cavalry and three batteries of light artillery, making not more than four hundred and fifty-three men, composed the only force of regular troops. troops. The strength of the Mexican army is stated by General Santa Anna, in his summons, to be twenty thousand, and that estimate is confirmed by all the information since obtained. Our loss is two hundred and sixtyseven killed, four hundred and fifty-six wounded and twenty-three missing. Of the

numerous wounded, many did not require removal to the hospital and it is hoped that a comparatively small number will be permanently disabled. The Mexican loss in killed and wounded may be fairly estimated at fifteen hundred and will probably reach two thousand. At least five hundred of the killed were left upon the battle-field. We have no means of ascertaining the number of deserters and dispersed men from their ranks, but it is known to be very great.

"Our loss has been especially severe in officers, twenty-eight having been killed upon the field. * * * No loss falls more heavly upon the army in the field than that of Colonels Hardin and McKee and Lieutenant Colonel Clay. Possessing in a remarkable degree the confidence of their commands, and the last two having enjoyed the advantage of a military education, I had looked particularly to them for support in case we met the enemy. I need not say that their zeal in engaging the enemy and the cool and steadfast courage with which they maintained their positions during the day, fully realized my hopes and caused me to feel more sensibly their untimely loss.

"The Mississippi riflemen, under Colonel Jefferson Davis, were highly conspicuous for their gallantry and steadiness, and sustained throughout the engagement the reputation of veteran troops. Brought into action against immensely superior force, they maintained themselves for a long time unsupported and with a heavy loss, and held an important position in the field until reinforced. * * * The Kentucky cavalry, under Colonel Marshall, rendered good service dismounted, acting as light troops on our left, and afterwards with a portion of the Arkansas cavalry, in meeting and dispersing the column of cavalry at Buena Vista. The First and Second Illinois and the Second Kentucky regiments served immediately under my eye and I bear a willing testimony to their excellent conduct

General Wm. O. Butler, of Kentucky, . who had been appointed a major general of volunteers early in the war, was not present at Buena Vista because of painful wounds received in the affair of Monterey. In this battle another Kentuckian, Major Philip N. Barbour, of the Third United States Infantry, was killed. Among other Kentuckians then in the Army of the United States destined to high rank and distinction in later days was a young lieutenant, Simon Bolivar Buckner, not long from West Point, from which he had graduated but a few years before. He engaged in the war with Mexico as a second lieutenant of infantry and by promotions won by bravery in action, came back to the United States as a captain in the regular army.

It is claimed that of the troops who under General Taylor, won General Taylor, won the battle of Buena Vista and sent General Santa Anna hurrying from the field, nineteen per cent were Kentuckians.

January 29, 1847, Major John P. Gaines, Captain Cassius M. Clay and thirty men of the First Kentucky Cavalry, were captured at Encarnacion, remaining in the hands of the enemy at Mexico City for several months.

It will be recalled that Captain John S. Williams' company of Kentuckians had been accepted for service in Mexico by special order of the war department. This company was not engaged at Monterey nor at Buena Vista, as it had been ordered to the command of

General Winfield Scott at Vera Cruz, with whom it took part in the movement against the City of Mexico. The enemy was first encountered at Cerro Gordo, to which point Santa Anna had proceeded after his disastrous experience with General Taylor at Buena Vista. Cerro Gordo was a strong natural position and the Mexican engineers had added to the difficulties of attack by the erection of fortifications. In the initial attack upon this stronghold, General Pillow was in the advance, the post of honor being accorded to Colonel Haskell's Tennessee regiment, to which Captain Williams' company had been assigned. Twice the gallant assailants were driven back, but they were not to be denied and a third time, facing a hail of shot and shell, they advanced-halting not, faltering not until the works of the enemy were carried and the flag of the United States flaunted in the breeze where but a few moments before that of Mexico had waved defiance to the gallant invaders. Captain Williams and his Kentuckians, touching elbows with the brave sons of the Volunteer state, were in the forefront of the battle and won the plaudits of all who noted their desperate courage. It was there, as has been before noted in this work, that Captain Williams won the sobriquet of "Cerro Gordo" which clung to him during all the succeeding years of his long life. As "Cerro Gordo" Williams, he led a brigade of cavalry in the Confederate army, and as "Cerro Gordo" Williams he sat in the senate of the United States from Kentucky. He was a gallant soldier and led men of like caliber over the hot plains of Mexico, and in other and later years, in the army of the Confed

eracy.

Professor N. S. Shaler of Harvard College, himself a Kentuckian and a former volunteer soldier in the Federal army, 1861-5, says in "The American Commonwealth:" "These battles of the Mexican war proved that the American militia, properly commanded, could

sustain a long series of attacks, or stand. steadily under the heaviest fire from overwhelming numbers without becoming demoralized by the many well-delivered blows which might strike their lines. Mexico became a training ground in the art and skill of military tactics of many men, both in the regular and volunteer service, who afterwards became distinguished by their important parts in the Civil war. Many of these soldiers reappear in the subsequent civil and military history of the state, both on the Federal and Confederate sides. Here they received the training which gave them successful leadership. At the beginning of the Mexican war, there was no state in the Union where there had been for a generation a greater neglect of the military art on the part of her people. There remained from the military life of the old days but two elements of value to the soldier -an instinctive as well as a trained ability in the use of firearms, and a strong combative spirit. These proved of great efficiency. These troops were to be tried against a people who possessed a large degree of soldierly qualities. The Mexicans were hardy, brave and patient, and well-trained in the simpler art of war; their frequent internal struggles having given them recent and extensive experience in military affairs. The experience proved that the Kentucky troops showed little of that intractable and insubordinate spirit, or unwillingness to submit to command, that marked their ancestors in 1812. The long training in civic life had finally subjugated the wilder impulses of insubordination that were the reproach of the pioneer soldier. There was no time to give these volunteers even a good camp training, and their officers were incompetent to the task. They fought as raw militia." And they likewise won.

Every one knows the result of the war with Mexico; how the American troops following victory after victory, finally marched into the City of Mexico and dictated terms of peace,

which provided that the Rio Grande from its mouth westward towards the Pacific, should be the boundary line between the two countries, thus giving in its entirety the splendid domain of Texas to the United States, as well as New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and California. In consideration of this vast acquisition of territory, the United States paid to Mexico, though the former had been the victor and therefore entitled to make terms the sum of fifteen million dollars. Those uninformed persons who consider the payment of twenty million dollars to Spain for the Philippine Islands, at the close of the war between the two countries, an anomaly in treaties between a victorious and a defeated country, have perhaps never heard of the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, which gave to the United States a territory one-fourth as large as the then existing United States and for which it paid fifteen million dollars.

The conclusion of hostilities between the two countries has here been considered before its actual occurrence, since this work proposes to be a history of Kentucky rather than of the war with Mexico. But before that war had ended, the president had made a second call upon Kentucky for troops to the extent of two regiments. There was no more hesitancy in responding to this call than there had been to the first. Immediately two regiments were formed. The first one, numbered as the Third Kentucky Infantry, had for its field officers: Colonel, Manlius V. Thompson; lieutenant colonel, Thomas L. Crittenden, and major, John C. Breckinridge. The Fourth regiment was commanded by Colonel John S. ("Cerro Gordo") Williams, Lieutenant Colonel William Preston, and Major William T. Ward. These regiments, however, saw no active service, as peace was declared before they could reach the seat of war.

It may be of interest to note, in brief, the history of the above named officers. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas L, Crittenden, a son of Senator John J. Crittenden, later was a

major gencral in the regular army of the United States, winning his stars in the War Petween the States, in which great contest his brother, George B. Crittenden, was a major general in the Confederate army.

Major John C. Breckinridge was afterwards a member of congress from the Ashland district of Kentucky; vice president of the United States; senator from Kentucky; major general in the Confederate army and secretary of war in the cabinet of President Jefferson Davis.

Colonel John S. Williams of the Fourth Kentucky regiment (Cerro Gordo), as has been hitherto stated, became a brigadier general in the Confederate army, and senator from Kentucky in the United States senate.

Lieutenant Colonel William Preston, of the Fourth regiment, advanced $50,000 for the equipment and forwarding to the front of the First Kentucky Infantry and the First Kentucky Cavalry. After the war, he served in congress from the Louisville district; was minister of the United States at the court of Spain, and later, a major general in the Confederate army. At Shiloh, he held in his arms his dying brother-in-law, General Albert Sidney Johnston, another distinguished Kentuckian.

Major William T. Ward, of the Fourth Kentucky, was later a brigadier general of volunteers in the Federal army, a distinguished lawyer and an excellent citizen.

This brief recital, which covers only the field officers of the two regiments, indicates the character of the Kentuckians who answered their country's call. Among the line officers, and, indeed, among the private soldiers, there were many who in later years, rose to prominence and, in civil and in military positions, proved their high character and devotion to the state. Few of the living Kentuckians who had enlisted for the war with Mexico, failed to see service a few years later in either the Federal or Confederate army.

General Zachary Taylor, a grim old fighting man, had won such distinction in the war with Mexico, that the politicians at once turned their eyes towards him. The Whig party, from one cause or another, was waning and sought to recover its wasted strength by appealing to the popular sentiment of the people with a military hero. General Taylor, it was believed by the masses, had been unjustly treated in Mexico when the greater part of his regular army support had been taken from him for the attack on Vera Cruz, leaving him with a mere handful of raw volunteers with which to meet the twenty thousand trained troops of Santa Anna at Buena Vista. Notwithstanding this handicap, he had declined to accept the advice of the War Department and withdraw to Monterey, but had boldly marched to the front, where finding an advantageous position, he had sat down and, in effect, invited Santa Anna to call and get acquainted. The result has been stated herein. It is known of all men.

boldly

General Taylor, "Old Rough and Ready," was the idol of the people of the United States who had then and have now an intense admiration for the man who says but little and does much.

The Whig party, always able but not always victorious, saw its opportunity and when its national convention met June 8, 1848, in Philadelphia, it recognized that the psychological moment for a victory had arrived, and with

a foresight not always seen in national conventions, it nominated for president General Zachary Taylor, a Kentuckian, but then a resident of Louisiana, and for vice president, Millard Fillmore, of New York. It is extremely doubtful if General Taylor, at the time of his nomination, owed allegiance to either the Whig or the Democratic party. He was then and for most of his years had been a soldier seeing his duty and doing it, as a true soldier always does, and giving little heed to the petty and pestilent divisions of party politics. He accepted the nomination as he would have accepted an order from the war department to proceed to make war upon any enemy threatening the country.

The nomination of General Taylor was as wormwood and gall to General Scott, who was soldier and politician too, and who went to his honored grave with the feeling that Republics are ungrateful. He had rendered soldierly service to his country for all the years of his manhood and the reward to which he deemed himself entitled was the presidency. He had triumphed in Mexico, as had General Taylor, but being superior to the latter in command, his imperious spirit could ill brook the selection of his subordinate for the highest honors in the gift of the people. Later, he was to have tendered him a like nomination, only to see the great honor of the presidency given to another of his subordinates in Mexico, a mere brigadier general of volunteers,