“Old Zack’s at Monterey,
Bring out your Santa Anner;
For every time we raise a gun,
Down goes a Mexicanner;”
yet in reality he was now enthroned in the hearts of the soldiers generally as a father, a hero and almost a fetich.[4]
Invoked by Wool, then, Taylor—instead of drawing him back, as the government wished—appeared at Saltillo on the first or second of February with about 700 men, and proceeded to occupy the advanced position already mentioned. Believing, as we have seen, that a lack of water on the road from San Luis would prevent any strong body of Mexicans from coming north at that season, and hearing that a great part of Santa Anna’s troops had gone toward Vera Cruz, he scouted alarms; and in addition to his other grounds for pushing forward, he thought so doing would tend to restore confidence among the troops and the people of Saltillo. Moreover, although he had ridiculed Scott’s intimation that he might be able to manoeuvre toward San Luis in the early spring, he was now planning to do so.[4]
Scrambling out of Saltillo by the southern route, which makes a short but sharp ascent as it leaves the town, Taylor found himself on a rather smooth plateau elevated nearly or quite 6000 feet above the sea, and after a ride of about five miles discovered on the left, near the road, four or five mean adobe buildings, headquarters of the Buena Vista ranch, where Wool’s command had recently been in camp. The southern outlook from this point was desolate but noble. On both sides rose high, barren mountains. Those on the west, formed of many rather thin horizontal slabs of rock, slightly concave toward the sky and separated by thicker deposits of a softer material eroded at the edges, formed reddish, flat-topped pyramids like the pictured hanging gardens of Babylon; while those on the other hand were a true sierra, a line of saw-tooth peaks buttressed with sharp spurs. Descending easily for about a mile and a half, the General came to a narrow place called by Mexicans La Angostura (The Narrows), and then traversed lengthwise for a distance of about three and a half miles the approximately north-and-south valley of Buena Vista. At the end of this came the windy, dusty farm of La Encantada, where Butler had stationed Wool for a time; and then began the smiling valley of Agua Nueva, which broadened gradually for about seven miles, and ended at the farm or hacienda of that name. This lay near the mountain on the eastern edge of a wide plain, generously supplied by nature with fuel and water.[4]
Here Taylor pitched his tent on the fifth, and by the fourteenth substantially all the troops were on the spot—about 650 camping with him and some 4000 lying with Wool a mile or so away. The General ordered no scouting, and took about the same precautions against surprise that Gaines and Borland had taken. On the ground that spies could not be kept out, he let the Mexicans come and go with perfect freedom. The engineers, reconnoitring on their own responsibility, concluded that the mountains were “passable in every direction” by routes familiar to the enemy but of course blind to the invader.[2] Parallel roads lay beyond the heights on each side. Yet here Taylor decided that he would meet the enemy, should they care to attack him;[3] and he said to the correspondent of the New York Tribune; “Let them come; damned if they don’t go back a good deal faster than they came.” In reality the troops had more reason than ever to feel alarmed; but Dagon was again in the midst of them, and they stood like mountains. Taylor might be old and slow and inefficient, and he might know little about the art of war, but he could stiffen the courage of soldiers. “Every man feels that the honor of his country is now placed in his hands,” wrote Lieutenant Posey on the nineteenth.[4]
SANTA ANNA’S PLANS
This takes us back to Santa Anna, who left the city of Mexico for the north on September 28. When his carriage had rolled on for about thirty miles, he received word that Monterey had fallen, and the news occasioned many bitter reflections; but there were enough other matters to divert his thoughts. He understood well the superior strength of the United States; but from Mackenzie’s mission and the conviction that war expenses would be extremely unpopular in this country, he doubtless felt sure that we earnestly desired peace. It was therefore clear to him that his problem was to gain one victory. This would so discourage us, he seems to have calculated, that he could end the war on fairly satisfactory terms.[7]