To the troops the march proved a refreshing and beneficial change. The weather was now fine, the road almost free from mud, and the breeze balmy. Frequently the blue lupine, the gay verbena, the saucy marigold and countless other bright flowers carpeted the ground. The cactus and the cochineal excited and gratified curiosity. Ducks and geese often flew up from the line of advance. Many rabbits and many deer scampered across the plain; and occasionally wolves, catamounts and panthers were frightened from cover. Wild horses would gaze for an instant at their cousins in bondage, and then gallop off, tossing their manes disdainfully; and once a herd of them, spaced as if to allow room for cannon, were taken for Mexican cavalry. Innumerable centipedes, tarantulas and rattlesnakes furnished a good deal of interest, if not of charm. The boundless prairie had somewhat the fascination of the sea; and occasionally, when a mirage conjured up a range of blue mountains—clothed with forests and reflected in lakes—that melted presently into the air, one had a sense of moving on enchanted ground.[19]
To be sure, the march was not entirely agreeable. For about 196 miles it stretched on and on, and most of the way it lay through deep, sandy plains, here glistening with salt, and there varied with briny marshes or sticky black dirt. In some places Mexicans had burned the herbage; and the light ashes, raised by the tramp of many feet, settled on the soldiers’ faces till they could scarcely recognize one another. Tortured with thirst, they would occasionally break ranks pell-mell at the sight of water; but as a rule they found it brackish. All suffered alike; and we have a picture of Taylor himself breakfasting at the door of his tent with a mess-chest for table, his rugged countenance flaming with sunburn, his long lips cracked and raw, and his long nose white with peeling skin. But the experience, even at its worst, proved a wholesome tonic after the degeneration of Corpus Christi.[19]
March 20 the army came to the Arroyo Colorado, a salt lagoon about a hundred yards wide and three or four feet deep. Here General Mejía, the commander at Matamoros, who knew all about our troops and their movements, had intended to win a sheaf of laurels; but orders from his government, not quite ready for action, arrived in time to curb this ambition. He concluded then to try the effect of a ruse, and his officer convinced the Americans, with solemn warnings, bugle-calls here and there, and a clever showing of heads among the bushes and trees on the southern side of the lagoon, that a hard fight would result from attempting to cross it. But without the least hesitation Taylor prepared for battle. Ringgold’s pieces were made ready. Worth dashed into the stream at the head of an advance party; and on gaining, unopposed, the opposite bank, he saw—dust in the atmosphere, and far away a dozen small black specks rapidly growing smaller. But morally it was a victory; and the troops, though cheated, felt encouraged.[20]
March 23, after making fifteen miles across a clear, dry prairie, the army came to a road that led to Matamoros, about eighteen miles away on the right, and to Point Isabel, distant nine or ten on the other side; and Taylor, ordering Worth and the infantry to camp and watch for the enemy at a suitable place in the former direction, proceeded to the coast with his cavalry. There he found the transports in sight and the wind favorable. Defences were planned at once; and on the 27th, leaving an engineer, supported by a guard under Munroe, to superintend the construction of them, the General returned to the army, then some ten miles from Matamoros. The next morning all advanced, and soon came to rough defiles. On each side bristled what a soldier described as an irregular, impenetrable mass of “scraggly, scrubby, crooked, infernally illegitimate and sin-begotten bushy trees loaded with millions of thornpins”—that is to say, chaparral. Passing this and a few cabins in the midst of corn, cotton and pomegranates, the troops found themselves at the end of their march, Río Bravo, the “Bold river of the North,” brown with mud, rolled swift and boiling at their feet; and in plain view about half a mile distant—black with crowded house-tops, gay with flags, and noisy with bugles and barking dogs—lay Matamoros. A rude pole was soon raised; to the music of our national airs the colors went up; and a small masked battery of field guns was planted near them.[21]
A singular political game then took place between Taylor and Mejía. The former did everything possible to convince the Mexican general that his movement was entirely pacific, and offered to “enter into any arrangements to secure the peace and harmony of the frontier” during negotiations between the two governments; but the latter insisted over and over again that a state of war had been created by the American advance. In spite of this Taylor reminded his officers of the “essentially pacific” and “conciliatory” intentions of the army; yet at the same time he reported the Mexican attitude as distinctly hostile, asked for reinforcements, mounted four 18-pounders to command the city, and about April 7 began what came to be known as Fort Brown, a large, bastioned “field-work” opposite the lower end of the city.[22]
THE MEXICAN ATTITUDE
On April 11 General Ampudia, the assassin of Sentmanat, arrived at Matamoros to assume the chief command, accompanied by cavalry and followed, as the Americans understood, by two or three thousand more troops. The next day he signalized his advent by ordering Taylor to decamp at once for the other side of the Nueces—a proposal to which a courteous negative was returned—and by compelling all the Americans in the city, “under open threats of violence,” to leave town within twenty-four hours. Taylor retaliated by requesting our naval commander off the Rio Grande to stop the use of that stream. As the Mexican attitude made it impossible for us to have the joint navigation implied by our claim, this appeared reasonable; but essentially the measure was defensive, since without supplies coming by water a large force could not remain long at Matamoros. When Ampudia complained, the General pointed out that sealing up the river was only the “natural result of the state of war so much insisted on by the Mexican authorities as actually existing,” and offered to reopen it if Ampudia would join him in maintaining an armistice during the negotiations of the two governments; but this led to no result.[23]
Ampudia’s orders and intention had been to attack the Americans as soon as possible, but his glorious prospects darkened immediately. Though given the place of Major General Arista, long at the head of military affairs in this quarter, because he supported the revolution of Paredes while Arista not only frowned upon it, but seemed to aim at making northeastern Mexico independent, Ampudia was detested and thought incompetent—an opinion he did not share—by not a few in the northern army, whereas Arista stood high in his caste, and, as a person of wealth and position, had strong friends well able to make trouble for the central government. Consequently an order dated April 4 made Arista commander-in-chief with Ampudia as lieutenant. The latter was immediately forbidden to shine on the field of glory, and, finding his officers would not support him in disobedience, he submitted.[24]
Arista, however, bearing instructions dated April 4 to attack the Americans, reached the scene on the 24th, and ordered his cavalry general, Torrejón, to cross above Matamoros with about 1600 men. Hearing a rumor of this movement, Taylor sent Captain Thornton and about sixty dragoons late that afternoon to reconnoitre; and the next morning, some twenty-eight miles from camp, finding himself completely shut in by overwhelming forces, the Captain tried to break through, lost several men killed and wounded, and then with all the rest surrendered. This was war. “Hostilities have begun,” announced Arista on the day of his arrival. “Hostilities may now be considered as commenced,” reported Taylor on the 26th; and—besides advising Polk to organize twelve-months volunteers—he at once called upon Texas and Louisiana for about 5000 men.[25]
REASONS FOR POLK’S COURSE