General Taylor waited at Matamoras until September 19, when, having been joined by General Worth, he encamped with 6,000 men within three miles of Monterey, a strongly fortified place, ninety miles distant from Matamoras. On the north, Monterey was protected by a strong citadel, with lunettes on the east, and by two fortified hills on either side of the river just above the town. Worth's division planted itself above the city on the Mexican line of retreat. Garland's brigade, advancing between the citadel and the first lunette, reached the city with heavy loss. After three companies had failed to move to Garland's support, two other companies passed to the rear of the citadel and compelled the Mexicans to abandon that point. An attempt Assault of Monterey on the second lunette failed with heavy loss to the Americans. The next morning Worth endeavored to capture the fortified eminence south of the river. The Americans advanced in the face of a plunging artillery fire. A host of skirmishers clambered over the parapet and turned its guns on the fleeing Mexicans, and, with two supporting regiments moving along the slope, drove the Mexicans out of Fort Saldado. At daybreak the hill on the north side of the river was carried. These positions commanded the western half of the city. On the morning of the 23d, the American troops fought their way in, but were driven out again. Worth's men then pushed into the town from the west, and finding the streets swept by artillery, broke into the houses. On the next morning, September 24, Ampudia capitulated. The capture of Monterey inspired the American poet, Charles F. Hoffman, to a song modelled after the famous St. Crispin's Day speech in Shakespeare's "King Henry V.":

We were not many—we who stood
Hoffman's stanzas Before the iron sleet that day;
Yet many a gallant spirit would
Give half his years if he but could
Have been with us at Monterey.
Our banners on those turrets wave,
And there our evening bugles play;
Where orange-boughs above their grave
Keep green the memory of the brave
Who fought and fell at Monterey.

An armistice of eight weeks was agreed upon. The armistice was disapproved Long armistice by the American Secretary of War, and, in November, General Scott was ordered to take command and conduct the war on his own plans.

In Mexico, General Paredes, who favored the restoration of monarchical rule, was opposed by General Alvarez in the south. When Paredes left the capital to go to the front, revolution broke out behind him. Don Mariano Revolution in Mexico Solas, the commandant of the City of Mexico, summoned to his aid General Santa Anna. On his arrival this popular general, but recently banished from the capital, was hailed as the saviour of his country and was invested with the supreme military command. Paredes went into exile. Santa Anna, after inexplicable delay, raised war funds to the amount of six million dollars, and advanced toward San Luis Potosi. There the "Napoleon of the West," as they called him in Mexico, wasted more precious months.

On the American side, too, little was done. On August 8, the Wilmot Proviso was considered. It was a proviso to the $2,000,000 bill asked by the President to arrange peace with Mexico, and it declared it to be "an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from Mexico, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist therein." August 10 the proviso came up for final passage, but John Davis of Massachusetts, in order to defeat action on the bill, held the floor till the session expired. Congress adjourned on that day. Great agitation prevailed in the North over the defeat of this proviso. The Democrats lost their majority in the Twenty-ninth Congress, owing to the new tariff and Howe's sewing machine the predominance of pro-slavery issues in the war. Polk had but 110 votes against 118 when the new Congress met. Now the new tariff went into effect. Howe, the American inventor, secured a patent for an improvement in sewing-machines, which embodied the main features of the machine used at present; to wit, a grooved needle provided with an eye near its point, a Iowa becomes a State shuttle operating on the side of the cloth opposite the needle to form a lockstitch, and an automatic feed. On December 28, Iowa was admitted to the Union as the twenty-ninth State.

1847

GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT reached the harbor of Vera Cruz in January, and assumed command of all the American forces. He took with him the best Santa Anna's advance officers and troops on the field of action, and left Taylor with only 5,200 men, most of whom were volunteers. Santa Anna, who had gathered 12,000 men eager to be led against the Americans, was approaching Saltillo. Leaving Monterey on January 31, Taylor reached Saltillo on February 2, and passed on to Aqua Nueva, twenty miles south of Saltillo, where he remained three weeks. Thence he fell back to a mountain gorge opposite Buena Vista. On February 22, his troops and those of Santa Anna were within sight of each other. Under a flag of truce, Santa Anna demanded Taylor's surrender, which was refused. The famous battleground, taking its name from the estate of Buena Vista, is a rugged valley from two to five miles wide, between rocky walls a thousand feet high. The slopes on either side are cut by deep ravines. Taylor placed his forces in groups on the crests of the bluffs, at the base of the eastern mountain, and in the southern edge of the plateau. The Mexican troops attempted to flank his position, but were driven off. The Mexican cavalry were sent to Buena Vista Taylor's rear to intercept the American retreat, but they were beaten back after a fierce hand-to-hand fight, led by Taylor himself. Santa Anna made his first attack in three columns. Two of these combined and turned the American left. The third, thrown against the American right, was forced to retreat, the Americans having formed a new front. Again the Mexicans sought to gain Taylor's rear, but with two regiments supported by artillery and dragoons, the American commander drove them back, firing into their heavy mass.

At one point in the engagement, an Indiana regiment, through a mistaken order, gave way, thereby placing the American army in peril. But the Mississippians and the Kentuckians threw themselves forward; the Indiana troops rallied, and the Mexicans were repulsed. General Taylor, standing Taylor's order to Bragg near Captain Bragg's battery, saw signs of wavering in the enemy's line. "Give them a little more grape, Captain Bragg," he exclaimed—a command which was repeated all over the United States during the political campaign two years later. The Mexican column broke, and Taylor drove it up the slope of the eastern mountain. By means of a false flag of truce the endangered wing, however, escaped. Santa Anna, forming his whole force into one column, advanced. The Americans fell back, holding only the northwest corner of the plateau. When morning broke, the enemy had disappeared. The Mexican loss was 2,000, that of the Americans 746. Henry Clay, a son of the Kentucky statesman, as he lay wounded, was despatched by a Mexican Conflicting claims of victory vacquero. Colonel Jefferson Davis commanded with distinction a regiment of Mississippi riflemen. Buena Vista was Taylor's last battle. Its fame was heralded throughout America. Both sides claimed the victory. The Mexicans chanted Te Deums. In the United States the poet Kifer sang:

From the Rio Grande's waters to the icy lakes of Maine,
Let us all exult! for we have met the enemy again.
Beneath their stern old mountains we have met them in their pride,
And rolled from Buena Vista back the battle's bloody tide;
Where the enemy came surging swift, like the Mississippi's flood,
And the reaper, Death, with strong arms swung his sickle red with blood.