HIS FIRST ROMANCE

While on a tour through the West in 1899, General Longstreet was entertained in San Diego, California, at a dinner at the home of U. S. Grant, Jr. After dinner he requested the company to stand while he proposed a toast. We expected, perhaps, some pleasantry or gallant compliment to the hostess. He said: “Thirty-odd years ago I first met General Grant in the Civil War at the Wilderness, and there received the wound that paralyzed my right arm. During the fiercest warfare this nation has seen, General Grant was the strongest obstacle that stood between me and my people and the consummation of the dearest hopes that they then cherished. Now, in this day of peace and union, with not a cloud upon the sky of a reunited country, in the presence of General Grant’s descendants, under the roof of his namesake son, I want to drink this toast to the memory of Grant, revered alike by the brave men who fought with him and the equally brave men who fought him.”

Fifty years before the pleasant day in San Diego, fresh from the fields of his honors and victories in Mexico, young Major Longstreet had come home to wed the daughter of his old brigade commander, Colonel John Garland. She was Marie Louise Garland, a very charming woman, and so small of figure as to be in striking contrast to her husband of six feet two. They were engaged for some time before the breaking out of the Mexican War. With a lofty deference, which he bravely overcame in later life, he had never kissed his fiancée. In setting out for the Mexican War, he said that he thought, inasmuch as he might get killed and never see her again, it might not be improper, under all the sad circumstances, to kiss her. They had ten children, five of whom died in infancy. A word as to the living five. A son born in Virginia during the war was named Robert Lee, after the Southern Commander. This son served in the recent Spanish-American War, and was, by happy fortune, a member of the staff of General Fitzhugh Lee. He is now in the government service at Washington City. Another son, named James, after his father, was born in Virginia not long after the surrender. At the time, General Longstreet wrote to an absent relative: “This is my Union son, but he has a yell like the rebel yell when trying to reach the breastworks. I have named him James, after myself, and I know he will always be as good a Union man as I am going to be hereafter.” This son likewise saw volunteer service in the Spanish-American War. He afterwards received a commission in the regular army, and is now serving in the Philippines in the Thirteenth Cavalry. This Union officer son is a strong Democrat; his brother in Washington is an equally strong Republican. TheGeneral always taught that political alignment should be based upon conviction alone. His oldest son, John, an architect, lives in Atlanta, the youngest son, Randolph, a farmer, lives on the home place at Gainesville; the only daughter is Mrs. Whelchel, of Gainesville, Georgia. There are five grandchildren.

General Longstreet said that he started out in his married life with the purpose of preserving military discipline in the family,—managing the family as he would manage soldiers on the field. He soon found that this would not work, and turned over the chief control of his home to his wife.

General Longstreet was a great admirer of ladies, and has often said that he never saw enough of them, never knew as many as he wanted to know. Into his soldier life few ladies had come. When he got into civil life he wondered where all the ladies came from. After the Civil War he was much petted and kissed by the ladies of the South, as was the custom with the old heroes of the war. He submitted to it with something more than willingness, particularly from the younger and prettier girls. He always had for woman in the abstract the tenderest love and reverence. He considered her the human temple of all loveliness. He preserved to the end of his long life the romance and sentiment which, having but half a chance to develop in his youth, had continued to develop in his later years. The home was ever to him the holy of holies.

Last summer, at Chicago, he met the daughter of his first sweetheart, and told her, with beautifulnaïveté,that her mother had been his sweetheart before going to West Point; that he had meant to marry her when he got back, though he had not told her so; and on returning, to his disgust, he found her married to another fellow.

After the Mexican War General Longstreet servedextensively in the Indian campaigns out West. He considered it his duty and made it his delight, as do all good soldiers, to go willingly where he was sent. When choice was allowed him he went where the service was hardest. He did not ask to dine nicely nor to sleep warm. A storm cloud was not too rough a covering for him. He did not seek Olympian sunshine. He could gladly make the Rocky Mountains his bed, and the war-whoop of the Indian seeking to disturb the peace of his country was music to his ears. The highest word that he knew was duty. His country he loved above all things else. He served in the United States army for almost a quarter of a century, nearly always west of the Mississippi.

When the Civil War broke out he was paymaster at Albuquerque, New Mexico, with the rank of major. The country had for years been in comparative peace, and he had given up the cherished idea of military glory and high promotion. Where did his duty lie in this hour? He had loyally served in the Union army for nearly twenty-five years and through the war that gave to the nation a rich empire. His State and his people were now going to fight the Union. The Union officers with whom he was serving and the Union soldiers whom he had commanded, pleaded with him to stay with the Union; their wives and daughters entreated him and wept over him; the power of vast association appealed wonderfully to him; but he thought that duty called him to the service of the South, and no earthly power could keep him from that service. He sent in his resignation, and set out at once for Richmond. His relatives and friends along the way, only taking time to speak to him as he passed, hastened him on to Richmond. It was a gala journey that he made through the Southern country. The music of Southern songs was borne upon every breeze. The wildest enthusiasm electrifiedtown and hamlet; from the open doors of every farm-house came salutations cheering the passengers on to Richmond. He was not allowed to pay for entertainment at any Southern hotel. Everything was free for those who were going to join “Jeff. Davis for Dixie and for Southern rights.”

Longstreet entered the Confederate service as brigadier-general, and reported for duty to General Beauregard at the first Manassas. After the baptism of fire at Antietam, in 1862, Longstreet was made lieutenant-general, next in rank to Lee. This rank he retained to the end of the war, ranking even Stonewall Jackson. This fact is especially mentioned, because the last generation of the South have often confused the rank secured by their fathers in the war with the paper ranks given by the Confederacy when the war was over and that government, heroic in its ruins, had nothing else to give.

I have heard it said by many Union officers that Longstreet’s corps, the First Corps, was the terror of the Union army. I have heard it said that Longstreet was the only officer in the Confederate army whom Grant and Lincoln wholesomely feared. He was Lee’s right arm in very truth. The morning of the battle of the Wilderness, while President Lincoln was at the War Department, some one asked him, “What is the best thing that can happen to the Union to-day?” He answered, “To kill Longstreet.” It nearly happened, but by the bullets of Longstreet’s own men, because in so gallantly leading them he went too far in front.

After the fall of the curtain at Appomattox General Longstreet went to New Orleans and engaged in the cotton and insurance business. He developed in business the splendid ability that marked him as a soldier. He was making ten thousand dollars a year at the time the celebrated difference of opinion came up as to the course the South should pursue in the rehabilitation of the war-wasted land. It was then that he wrote the famous political letter of 1867 that turned the South against him and made it practically impossible for him to do business in that section of the country. The idea that this letter was written to secure political preferment from the powers in authority is perfectly absurd. He was making more in business, and would have made still more and more as the years went on, than he could make then or ever afterwards in politics. Besides, to me, and to any one who ever knew the real man, the idea of his changing his convictions a hair’s breadth for any sort of gain is too far-fetched for serious discussion. The very head and front of his offending consisted in his belief that it was better for the South to accept the situation then presented; better for the high-class men of the South to hold the offices than to have the negroes and scallawags hold them; better for the South to keep faith with its Appomattox parole, which promised obedience to constituted authority. It was a few years after this letter that President Grant appointed him Surveyor of the Port at New Orleans. He never asked for this appointment, and was not consulted about it. President Grant, in the generosity of his heart, voluntarily sent his name to the Senate, and the first news General Longstreet had of it came through the press.

General Longstreet never affiliated with the controlling element of the Republican party in the South. He believed in a white man’s Republican party in the South, and therefore was never in favor with the dominant Republican party in that section that believed differently. The political appointments that came to him came because of his high character and his record of substantial achievement, and in spite of the opposition of miscellaneous competitive place-seekers. He led a political movement that has had no following in the Southern section. It would seemingly have been easy for him to have acquiesced in the methods of the Republican machinery in the Southern States which would naturally have made him the head and front of the Southern Republican party. It would have seemed easier in an earlier day for him to have gone with the Democracy, which would have made him the political idol of the South, as he had been its military idol. Is is so much easier to be a demagogue than it is to be a man. It requires no unusual moral caliber to take a seat on the band-wagon and go with the crowd. Conscience compelled James Longstreet to oppose politically, for their own good, as he saw it, his Southern fellow-countrymen. He announced his convictions and stood by them. He never profited, as we measure material benefits; he lost. The qualities he exhibited in these crucial periods of his life differentiated the man from the time-server and place-seeker.

One who loved him and was close to him in life said, regretfully, not long ago, in speaking of him, that he never did anything after Appomattox that “turned out for his own good.” I felt a sudden tightening about my heart at this criticism. Perhaps as we view worldly honors and earthly goods the things he did after Appomattox did not “turn out for his own good.” But to me he has always been a figure of more sublime courage in the gathering storms of ’67 and the years that followed than on any of the brilliant fields of the Civil War. And I love best to think of him, not as the warrior leading his legions to victory, but as the grand citizenafter the war was ended, nobly dedicating himself to the rehabilitation of his broken people, offering a brave man’s homage to the flag of the established government, and standing steadfast in all the passions, prejudices, and persecutions of that unhappy period. It was the love and honor and soul of the man crystallized into a being of wonderful majesty, immovable as Gibraltar.

“There be things, O sons of what has deserved birthright in the land of freedom, the ‘good of which’ and ‘the use of which’ are beyond all calculation of earthly goods and worldly uses—things that cannot be bought with a price and do not die with death;” these, gathering strength and beauty in James Longstreet’s character, through the four terrible years of warfare, assumed colossal proportions in the dark reconstruction era. And when the story of his life has finally been told, in all its grandeur, the finer fame will settle not about the valorous soldier, but about Longstreet, the patriot-citizen.

When General Longstreet quit fighting, he quit fighting for good. He considered that the South was back in the Union to stay. There is no doubt in the minds of many with whom I have talked that General Longstreet’s conciliatory course, because of its effect in holding thousands obedient to the laws of the government, prevented the confiscation of much property in the South immediately after the war, and greatly alleviated the trials of that distressing period. The local ostracism of that day and subsequently cut General Longstreet deeply. He loved the South with all thetenderness of one who was willing to die for it. In all the quiet hours that he discussed the misrepresentations of the Southern people, the resentment they bore him, the criticisms and slanders that had been hurled at him, I never heard him utter a word against them or give expression to a note of bitterness. But I think towards the last, exhausted by much suffering, he had a pitiful yearning for complete reconciliation with all his people. Not many months before he died an officer of the Northern armies was calling on him at his hotel in Washington, and in discussing the Civil War and subsequent events, and General Longstreet’s part therein, said, “The Southern people have not appreciated you since the war, General, but when you are dead they will build monuments to you.” General Longstreet said nothing, but his eyes slowly filled. While he bore unjust criticism in silence, he was visibly moved by any evidence of affection from the Southern people.

I recall two very beautiful press tributes that appeared last summer while he was lying desperately ill at his home in Gainesville, Georgia; one was from the pen of Hon. John Temple Graves, in the Atlanta, Georgia,News; the other by Mrs. W. H. Felton, an old-time friend, in the AtlantaJournal. Mr. Graves, a representative of the splendid new South, spoke of the new generations as worthy descendants of the heroic days, and the place General Longstreet would always hold in their hearts; and Mrs. Felton, one of the important figures of the old South, told of the undying love for him of the soldiers of the Confederacy, and of the place he had worthily won in the affections of all the people; she wanted to speak these words to him for the comfort they would give him; and because he had nobly earned the right to hear them, and ten thousand times more from the people whose battles he had fought. When he seemed out of immediate danger, and strong enoughto understand, I read these tributes to him, and he wept like a child.

The forbearance of the man and his generous feeling towards those who used him harshly finally became a wonder, and is to-day a joy for me to remember. I will here give an instance or two touchingly illustrative of this side of his character. General Wade Hampton, as stoical as ever a Roman was, felt very bitterly against General Longstreet because of his Republican politics. He expressed his feelings freely both in public and private, and was embittered to the extent that he refused to speak to General Longstreet. When General Longstreet succeeded him as United States Commissioner of Railroads, he would not come to the office to turn it over to his successor. General Longstreet went to the office, took the oath alone, and endeavored as best he could to make himself acquainted with the duties of the position. When he came home that evening and told me, with evident surprise, that General Hampton was still bitter against him, I asked, rather in the hope of getting a reply in criticism of General Hampton, “What sort of a soldier was General Hampton, since he seems so intractable in civil life?” General Longstreet replied, without a moment’s hesitation: “There was not a finer, braver, more gallant officer in the Confederate service than Wade Hampton.” And when General Hampton died, I think the most splendid tribute paid him came from the pen of General Longstreet.

Years ago there were political differences between General Longstreet and Judge Emory Speer, now of the Federal Bench of Georgia, then a member of Congress from the old Eighth District of Georgia. General Longstreet felt that he had been wronged. The summer before his death we were at Mt. Airy, Georgia, for a short time. One day I saw JudgeSpeer in the hotel where we were stopping, and asked General Longstreet how he was going to receive him if Judge Speer should come to speak to him, in view of their past differences. The General replied, “As I would receive any other distinguished American. And as for our past differences, that has been a long time ago, and I have forgotten what it was all about.”

General John B. Gordon, during recent years, did General Longstreet injustice. I know he caused him much pain. At a time when General Longstreet was suffering horribly,—one eye had already been destroyed by the dreadful disease; he had long been deaf and paralyzed from war service; the wound in his throat was giving him severest pain,—at this sad time General Gordon revived the old, threadbare story that he had disobeyed orders at Gettysburg. But when a reporter from one of the New York dailies called to interview him about General Gordon and his charges, he refused to say one word. It was then that I said, “If you will not reply to General Gordon, I will. And in the future, so long as I shall live, whenever your war record is attacked, I will make answer.” And so it happened that the little story of Gettysburg was written while General Longstreet was nearing the grave. During these last, sorrowful days he had heard that General Gordon was not in good health, and he asked me, with touching concern, about his condition. I expected to tell General Gordon of these occurrences, but I never saw him again. The Reaper gathered him in, ten days after General Longstreet answered the call.

General Longstreet was a most devout churchman. In early life he was an Episcopalian, and he regularly attended that church in New Orleans until the political differences developed between himself and his friends. After that he noticed that even his church associates avoided him. They would not sit in the same pew withhim. Cut to the quick by such treatment, he began to wonder if there was any church broad enough to withstand differences caused by political and sectional feeling. He discovered that the Roman Catholic priests extended him the treatment he longed for. He began to attend that church, and has said that its atmosphere from the first appealed to him as the church of the sorrow-laden of earth. He was converted under the ministration of Father Ryan. After accepting the faith of the Catholic Church he followed it with beautiful devotion. He regarded it as the compensation sent him by the Almighty for doing his duty as he saw it. He clung to it as the best consolation there was in life. He went to his duties as devoutly as any priest of the church, and was on his knees night and morning, with the simple, loving faith of a little child.

The political estrangements between General Longstreet and many of the leaders of the South never extended to the soldiers who did any large amount of fighting for the South. There was a Confederate reunion in Atlanta in 1898. A camp of Confederate Veterans, of Augusta, Georgia, made up of his old command, sent General Longstreet a special request to come down from his home in Gainesville, and to wear his old uniform. He replied that his uniform had been destroyed years ago in the fire which burned his home and practically everything else he had, but that he would gladly go down with what was left of himself—that his old trunk of a body was the only relic of the Confederacy remaining to him. They then secured his measure and had a new Confederate uniform made forhim to represent the old as nearly as possible. During all his stay at that reunion the old soldiers flocked about him with a devotion that Napoleon would have envied. They went wild over him. When he went to the dining-room at the hotel, the doors had to be closed so that he could take his meals without interruption. One evening, in the Kimball, his old “boys” surged about him by the thousands for hours, eager to touch his hand, to touch his garments, to look into his face, and the tears streamed down his cheeks. Just before that, one day, outraged at some unkindness that had come from the South, I had said to General Longstreet, “The Southern people are no longer my people. I have no home and no country.” In the midst of the splendid demonstration at the reunion of 1898, when the thousands who had followed his colors stood with uncovered heads in his honored presence, I said to him, “This is the South that I love, because it loves you; it is the magnificent, generous, loyal South that I love with every impulse of my heart; these are my people.”

I think he never forgot the Confederate reunion in Atlanta in 1898. His old soldiers came to his room in a continuous stream. One afternoon, when he was asleep, utterly worn out, a one-legged, one-armed veteran, poorly clad, looking poorly fed, came to his room. I told him of the General’s exhausted condition—that he needed the rest, and I was really afraid to disturb him. Then he said, “Won’t you let me go in and look at my old commander, asleep. I haven’t seen him since Appomattox. I came all the way from Texas to see him, and I may never see him again.” Without a word I opened the door, and as the worn veteran looked upon his old chieftain we both cried. In the midst of it General Longstreet wakened and called the veteran to him. They embraced like brothers and wept together.

On the eve of the Spanish-American War GeneralLongstreet received hundreds of letters from his old soldiers in every part of the country, asking for the privilege of seeing service with him under the flag of the Union. One of them wrote: “If this country is going to have another war, I want to be in it, and I want to follow my old commander.” General Longstreet answered that he was seventy-eight, deaf, and paralyzed; that he had two sons he would send to fight for him, but that if his country needed his services, his sword was at its command.

As Commissioner of Railroads, General Longstreet made a tour of the West in 1899. He was received with beautiful consideration everywhere, but the welcome which touched him most was that of his old soldiers who greeted him in every State. It was marvellous to see how the veterans of a war that was over forty years ago had scattered through the West, and it certainly seemed that every one there had heard that General Longstreet was coming, and came to the nearest station to see him. With them were many Union veterans who gave him an equally cordial greeting.

I will digress here to say that General Longstreet could never stand on a foot of Northern soil where he was not received with every manifestation of earthly honor and esteem by the Union veterans and their descendants, and this touched him as nothing else in the world could have done. I wish to offer the humble tribute of my love to the chivalrous section that is to-day so close to my heart; the honors they paid General Longstreet, their tributes to him, did not end with the grave. Two weeks after the prospectus of this little volume had been sent out, the first edition had been bought, long before it was ready for delivery, by the Grand Army of the Republic, and the orders were accompanied by testimonials to General Longstreet as soldier and patriot that would make a memorial volume of richvalue, and a brief selection, at least, I hope to give in future editions.

At one place, on his Western tour in 1899, it became necessary for him to telegraph to an official of the Rock Island road to ask if he would “pass” his car. It happened that this official had been a Union officer who had received hard blows from Longstreet on many bloody fields. He replied that in the old days that tried the courage of men he was much more anxious to “pass” Longstreet than to meet him; that now he was going to insist on meeting him first, and afterwards he would “pass” anything the General wanted him to “pass.”

Next to the pleasure of meeting his old friends on this Western tour, General Longstreet most enjoyed the wonderful development of the country that had taken place since he was chasing wild Indians across its wide plains. The smiling farms that greeted him, the magnificent cities, the marvellously fertile irrigated sections that he had last beheld as deserts, the net-work of competing railroads which had taken the place of the trail and the half-worked wagon-roads, the evidences everywhere of a magnificent country built up by progressive people,—all these, with all the suggestiveness attaching to them, appealed with mighty force to his heart and to his mental appreciation. The picture of industrial growth is a beautiful and impressive one. It is a story in itself that needs only a suggestion to make it as large a part of this as it should make.

Genuine Americanism, a love of his country in every sentiment that concerns it and every line of development affecting it, formed a very large and attractive phase of General Longstreet’s character. And so, from every stand-point he enjoyed this Western trip to the full.

Next to the smoke of battle in the cause of his country, he loved nature in her gentlest and most quiet moods. He was fond of the forest and farm. He owned a small farm near Gainesville, Georgia, which was one of the delights of his life. Here he set out an orchard and a vineyard on a scale somewhat extensive, in which he found much pleasure. It is a hilly, uneven country, this rugged Piedmont section of north Georgia, noted for its red clay, its rocks, its mighty trees, the wild honeysuckles that carpet its woods, and the purity of the air that sweeps over it and the water that gushes in abundance from its depths. General Longstreet made his little farm in this picturesque section as productive and attractive as he could. It was mostly hills, and had to be terraced extensively to keep it from washing away. He had it terraced with much care, and laid off something after the manner of a battle-field. Thereupon the people around jokingly called it “Gettysburg.”

Here he had built and lived in a splendid home of the old colonial style of architecture, such as has long been popular in the South. The house was richly furnished. He had one of the finest libraries in the South, and had collected interesting and valuable souvenirs, and furnishings from all over the world. His residence was situated on a lordly eminence; beyond, the everlasting mountains stretched in unbroken length; in the valley between, the placid waters of the mountain streams wound lazily to the sea. The location was most beautiful, and has often been called “Inspiration Point.” Amid these romantic surroundings General Longstreet dispensed a hospitality characteristic of the most splendiddays of the old South. He often laughingly said that his house became a rendezvous for old Confederates who were hastily going West, and needed a “little aid.” They never knocked in vain at his door. He has said that a favorite tale of theirs was that they “had just killed a Yankee, and had to go West hurriedly;” thinking, of course, that this plea would strike a sympathetic chord.

Some twenty years ago General Longstreet’s home and everything it contained, save the people, vanished in flames. After that he lived in one of the out-houses, a small frame cottage such as any carpenter might build and any countryman might own.

Some years ago Hamlin Garland visited Gainesville for the purpose of calling on General Longstreet. After talking with him Mr. Garland wrote a very interesting article about him. He especially marvelled that he should find so great a man, so colossal a character, living in such modest fashion, seemingly almost forgotten by all sections of the country in whose destiny he had played so important a part. He said he found a world-famous general pruning grape-vines on a red hill-side of the picturesque mountain region of Georgia. He was delighted with his versatility, his information, and, most of all, with his glowing love of country and his broad ideas of the future greatness of America.

When the imposing house stood and when he afterwards occupied the cottage, his home was still the boasted “show-place” of Gainesville. He was Gainesville’s grand historic character, her first gentleman, and her best-loved citizen. Whatever resentment towards him because of political views may have been felt in other parts of the country where men were striving to be at the head of state processions, in his little home city there was never a break in the loving and proud esteem in which he was held by his home people.

Here life remained interesting to him to the last. His heart was ever young; when he died he was eighty-three years young. Only a day or two before he was taken away he was planning things that were to take place years in the future. Blindness, deafness, paralysis, the decay of physical faculties, failed to move his dauntless courage or quell his splendid determination.

General Longstreet’s last days were spent in revising his memoirs of the Civil War, as were Grant’s in writing his. The two colossal characters passed away suffering the excruciating pains of the same dread disease,—cancer,—both disdaining death, heroic to the end.

On the eve of the Spanish-American War General Longstreet was invited by the New YorkHeraldto contribute to its columns a paper on the subject of the threatened trouble with Spain.

The closing paragraph of that paper comes across the years a prophecy and prayer for all mankind:

“As the evening hours draw near, the bugle calls of the eternal years sound clearer to my understanding than when drowned in the hiss of musketry and the roar of cannon. By memory of battle-fields and prophecy of coming events, I declare the hope that the present generation may witness the disbandment of standing armies, the reign of natural justice, the ushering in of the brotherhood of man. If I could recall one hour of my distant but glorious command, I would say, on the eve of battle with a foreign foe, “Little children, love one another.”

Mexico will always be a land of romance. Her ruins are yet fragrant with memories of the mighty plans of Louis Napoleon.

After an absence of fifty years, General Longstreet revisited Mexico in the eventful summer of 1898, leisurely passing over some of the scenes of his early military experiences. Half a century had stolen away, yet architecturally he found Mexico but little changed. Few of the old landmarks were effaced. Modern ideas and inventions have been encouraged and do prevail in our sister republic, but the dream-like strangeness of its civilization is still all-pervading. Mexico is not unlike Egypt in some respects. Everywhere is the poetry of a past age. Egypt has its sphinx and the pyramids to illustrate a mysterious past; in Mexico we find the temples of the Aztecs and the monuments of their cruel conquerors. The Montezumas have left the impress of their race and civilization on every hand. To the northernvisitor Mexico will always be the land of the Aztecs, worshippers of the sun.

To me the battle-fields of 1846–47 were of supreme interest. They are to most Americans doubtless the chief magnet of attraction. But the eye of an active participant in those glorious achievements of American arms sees more as it sweeps over the valley of Mexico than is comprehensible to the unprofessional casual observer. It was my great privilege—to-day a cherished memory—to go over the fields that stretch away from Chapultepec with a war-worn soldier who fifty years earlier had there learned his first lessons in real warfare.

Mexico will always be a land of romance. Her civilization stands apart. Her ruins are yet fragrant with memories of the mighty plans of Louis Napoleon. From the ill-fated Maximilian empire to our own war with Mexico seems but a step back, and yet between the steps great history has been written.

Excepting Vera Cruz and Cerro Gordo, the scene of all the leading events of General Scott’s campaign lie almost within cannon-shot of the Mexican capital.

The four battles of Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec, which decided the fate of the war, occurred within a period of four weeks and within a radius of a dozen miles. The Mexican General Valencia was disastrously routed at Contreras August 19, 1847, and Churubusco was fought and won by the Americans next day. Then there was a short truce between the two belligerents, and terms of peace were proposed by an American plenipotentiary. These not proving satisfactory, hostilities were resumed. Scott moved with energy. On September 8 the battle of Molino del Rey occurred, the Americans winning, but at heavy sacrifice in killed and wounded. The successful assault on Chapultepec hill was made on the 13th, fivedays later, and on the morning of the 14th Scott’s splendid little army entered the Mexican capital and hoisted its flag over the public buildings. The belligerents engaged in these affairs were comparatively small and the losses on both sides very severe. The Mexicans fought well, but were execrably led. With the fall of Mexico Scott had conquered a nation with an army fewer in numbers than the single corps Longstreet commanded at Gettysburg.

Scott’s army, for the most part, was composed of veteran troops,—regulars, with a considerable contingent of fine and well-officered volunteers. Most of them were already battle-seasoned, having participated in General Taylor’s initiatory campaign of 1846 on the Rio Grande, where they had signally defeated the Mexicans at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterey. Taylor’s crowning victory at Buena Vista, February 23, 1847, did not occur until after Scott had drafted away the best part of his regulars for the march on Mexico.

Among them were the Fourth and Eighth Infantry regiments. Lieutenant Longstreet had served in both,—in the Fourth as brevet second lieutenant after graduating from the Military Academy in 1842, up to 1845, when he was promoted and transferred to the Eighth, and he was lucky enough to be with the latter in the action at Palo Alto, May 8, 1846, at Resaca de la Palma next day, and in the siege and capture of Monterey, September 21 to 23, of the same year. It was on these fields that most of the young fellows who afterwards became conspicuous in the Union and Confederate armies flashed their maiden swords.

In the Fourth, among Longstreet’s earlier official and social intimates at Jefferson Barracks and Camp Salubrity, were Captain George A. McCall, Lieutenants Augur, Grant, Alex. Hays, and David A. Russell,all afterwards distinguished Union generals. Captain McCall was then forty-three years old, and was graduated from West Point in 1822, just twenty years ahead of Longstreet’s class.

The subsequent Civil War produced some singular anticlimaxes to these old Mexican War friendships. It so happened, for instance, that sixteen years afterwards, at the battle of Glendale before Richmond, Longstreet’s Confederate division was pitted against McCall’s smaller Union division, and the Confederates had the best of it. About dusk, after the heavy fighting was over, McCall and his staff accidentally rode into the Forty-seventh Virginia. Curiously enough, the Union general alone was captured and brought to Longstreet’s head-quarters.

Having for a time been a brevet second lieutenant under McCall in the old Fourth Infantry, and really commiserating his personal mishap, General Longstreet cordially advanced, offering his hand and proffering such hospitality as was permissible in the untoward circumstances. But, deeply chagrined by his defeat and capture, McCall sullenly repelled Longstreet’s friendly advances. It only remained for the Union general to be sent back to Richmond in charge of a staff-officer and guard. It was the last meeting between the old captain and his former lieutenant, and, strangely, was McCall’s last appearance in battle, though he was exchanged in a few weeks. He somehow fell into disfavor with the Washington authorities, resigned in March, 1863, and died on a farm near Westchester, Pennsylvania, in 1868. McCall was a fine soldier of the old school. Grant was also a second lieutenant with McCall in the Fourth, and liked him very much.

Alex. Hays and Longstreet had been associated in both regiments. Like Longstreet, Hays was promotedand transferred from the Fourth to the Eighth, though upward of a year subsequently. Grant never left the Fourth until he resigned as captain, about seven years after the Mexican War. Hays and Grant had been friends at West Point, though not classmates, and very chummy afterwards while subs. in the old Fourth Infantry. The official personnel of General Taylor’s army, scant three thousand men, was so small that they were almost like a family. Everybody knew everybody else.

Hays was detached from the Eighth when Scott advanced into the valley of Mexico, but was engaged in several severe affairs in defence of convoys of supplies to the front, and also at Heamantle and Sequaltiplan. After that war was over he resigned, but in 1861 immediately sought service again, and soon rose to the command of a Union division. His division contributed materially to the repulse of Longstreet’s attack at Gettysburg on July 3. But poor Hays was killed in front of Longstreet’s lines at the Wilderness in 1864, the first battle in Virginia after his old comrade, Grant, had assumed command of the Union armies. Such was the fortune of war of the civil struggle.

The Eighth Infantry furnished from its Mexican War contingent few conspicuous leaders to either side in the subsequent Civil War. The regiment was compelled to surrender to the local authorities of Texas early in 1861, and were detained at the South many months. Only a few of its old officers then remained. All those of Southern proclivities had already withdrawn. Longstreet left the Eighth in 1858, ten years after peace with Mexico, having been promoted to major and paymaster. By detention as prisoners of war the Union soldiers of the Eighth were deprived of the early promotion which fell to the lot of most regulars.

Out of all the officers of the two regiments engaged in Mexico, only seven, it appears, espoused the Southern cause, and of these but three attained to any considerable rank in the Confederate armies,—Longstreet, Pickett, and Cadmus E. Wilcox. Pickett was a magnificent soldier, one of the most daring in the Confederate army.

In the two campaigns of Taylor and Scott the Fourth and Eighth lost no fewer than twelve officers killed and fatally wounded, and eighteen others seriously wounded, a very heavy percentage. This alone proves that the Americans had no walkover. Every foot of the ground was bravely contested by the Mexicans.

To continue this digression a little farther, it may be said that the genesis of the two Mexican campaigns is not well understood. Winfield Scott was and had long been the commanding general of the United States army, and entitled as such, aside from his military renown, to the Mexican command. But Scott, a Southern Whig, was ambitious to be President. The Democratic administration of Polk was quite naturally chary of giving Scott an opportunity to win public applause through a victorious military campaign. Scott had early submitted a plan of operations, with request for permission to lead an American army into Mexico. But Zachary Taylor, then only a colonel and brevet brigadier, was chosen for the purpose, to the discomfiture of Scott and his coterie. Of course, the general-in-chief chafed because he had thus designedly been over-slaughed by a junior.

The administration overreached itself. Taylor’s small victories in northern Mexico in the Spring of 1846 were so greatly magnified by the press of the States that he at once became the hero of the hour. Soon he was the open candidate of the Whig party for the Presidency; for Taylor, like Scott, was a SouthernWhig. Polk and his advisers were now between the devil and the deep sea. To beat back and neutralize the rising Taylor tide they precipitately turned to Scott. His original plan for bringing Mexico to termsviaVera Cruz was adopted, and he assigned to the command, with fulsome assurances of ample and continued support, which were never fulfilled.

Scott was thereupon givencarte blancheto withdraw such force of regulars from Taylor as he deemed necessary to the successful prosecution of his proposed invasion, and meanwhile Taylor, with some five thousand volunteers and a slight leaven of regular troops, was to remain on the defensive. Then something happened. Taylor did not choose to remain stock still, but advanced. A few weeks after the depletion of his army, which began in January, 1847, and before Scott had landed at Vera Cruz with his raw volunteers, Taylor worsted Santa Anna at Buena Vista. He not only signally defeated the foreign enemy, but completed the rout of the Democratic administration at Washington, and the next year was nominated by the Whigs and elected President hands down, wholly on the strength of his military achievements. Scott, nominated in 1852, was disastrously beaten by the Democratic candidate, Franklin Pierce, one of his inconspicuous civilian brigadiers in Mexico. It must have been a galling blow to the old General’s pride. His defeat was the death-blow of the Whig party.

Since those old days General Longstreet often speculated on the result if Taylor and Scott had been required to handle the armies of Lee and Grant and meet the conditions which confronted the great Union and Confederate leaders at the crucial periods of their campaigns. He concluded that both would have maintained their high reputations at the head of much larger bodies of troops than they marshalled in Mexico, even though confronted by abler opponents than Santa Anna, supported by stronger and better-disciplined armies than the half-starved, ill-appointed levies he brought against them at Buena Vista and Cerro Gordo. At all events, the young fellows of 1846–47 to a man believed Taylor and Scott adequately equipped to successfully meet any military emergency.

They were extraordinary characters. Both were practised officers dating back to the war of 1812, though neither was a West Point graduate. Scott on the Canadian frontier had commanded against considerable bodies of disciplined British troops in pitched battle, and came off with increased reputation. He had then visited Europe and observed the continental armies. He was well educated; had studied for the bar, but by preference took up the military profession, of which he was a diligent student. Scott was thoroughly up in theliterature of war. To a cultivated mind he added a colossal person and a fine presence.

General Scott’s chief fault was an overweening personal vanity which often took the form of mere pedantry, not unseldom bringing him into personal ridicule. Insufferably pompous, he invariably maintained a vast, unbending dignity, both of manner and speech, whether oral or written. The subalterns of the army looked upon him with absolute awe. Many a brevetted cadet would readily have chosen to go against a Mexican intrenchment rather than into the commanding general’s presence. He brooked no familiarity from high or low. While he sometimes indulged in a sort of elephantine affability, he was naturally dictatorial towards all subordinates, though always within the limits of decency. Scott’s was not at all the overbearing insolence of the coward. He always rode in full uniform, with all the insignia of his rank visible to the naked eye.

Such a queer combination of bigness and littleness, learning, practical ability, and whimsicality formed a character sure to create enemies, and it must be said that Scott had plenty of them, both in and out of the army. By them he was derisively dubbed “Old Fuss and Feathers.” Notwithstanding his weakness, the General was physically and morally a very brave man. He was cool and deliberate in forming his military plans, and once determined upon they were prosecuted with unhesitating energy and precision. Above all he was an honest man. Undoubtedly General Scott possessed a comprehensive military mind.

Equally cool and careful in planning, equally energetic in execution, and equally brave, honest, and true, in other respects Taylor was an entirely different type of man. Personally he was the antipodes of the handsome giant, Scott, being only of middle stature. His complexion was swarthy and his face rugged andhomely, but with a kindly expression. Unlike Scott again, Taylor’s schooling had been limited, yet without any affectation of style he wrote clearly and vigorously. From the age of one year he had lived the life of a Kentucky frontier farmer boy up to his entry into the army as a lieutenant in 1808.

Taylor’s military experience, confined wholly to the Western border in 1812, was limited to outpost affairs with Indians and the few squads of British soldiers and borderers who supported them. As an officer he had never met so much as a full company of disciplined soldiers until Palo Alto. Taylor never wore his uniform, or almost never. He dressed in rough clothes no better than those worn by the common soldier. He was often seen riding without his staff or other attendant, seeing things with his own eyes. He was frank and somewhat rough, but kindly in speech. While he was not without proper dignity, he talked and acted straight to the mark without much consideration for appearances. He treated his subordinates with easy consideration, and was often seen joking and laughing with mere subalterns. He was given the sobriquet of “Old Rough and Ready” by the army, in which he was dearly loved by all. It was a title which rang through the country in the political campaign of 1848. He not only inspired universal good will, rough and uncultivated as he was, but confidence. Such were the two Mexican commanders.

As we gazed down from Chapultepec’s heights, on that fragrant day of 1898, across the beautiful valley of Mexico, the war of fifty years agone seemed but yesterday to him who on those fields had added a new star of the first magnitude to the galaxy of American valor. Memories of the glorious past rushed through his mind. Here Grant and Lee had taken their first lessons in practical warfare on a considerable scale.Here had been won not only Texas, but the vast domain away to the Pacific. Since then what social, industrial, and political revolutions had he not witnessed. From the Mississippi had spread out a great republic, reaching from ocean to ocean. He had seen the Southern Confederacy rise and fall, and colossal history, along the way from Chapultepec to Manila, written in the blood of the nation’s strong men. And Mexico has not been behind in the mighty changes that have swept over the continent since her bitter humiliation in 1847. She has advanced by heroic strides, especially under the wise leadership of Diaz.

But after all it was not wholly the great events of half a century that crowded upon General Longstreet’s memory at this interesting juncture. Curiously enough, his mind persisted in fixing itself upon minor incidents,—social and personal relations,—on the comrades who had here and elsewhere laid down their lives in the service, on others who had risen to distinction or dropped out of the running. The “boys” of ’46 and ’47 again crowded upon him. It could hardly be otherwise, for they were a band of brothers then. When General Taylor’s little Army of Observation was collected in western Louisiana, the whole regular establishment of the United States consisted of no more than 12,139 officers and men. The Army of Occupation which was concentrated at Corpus Christi, Texas, in the fall of 1845, numbered only three thousand men.

The days of Corpus Christi still formed a vivid picture in General Longstreet’s mind. The oldest officers present—even General Taylor himself—had never seen so large a body of the regular army together. Adjoining the camp were extensive level prairies, admirably adapted to military manœuvres. Many of the officers had not taken part in even a battalion drill since leaving West Point, and with most of them evolutions of theline had only been read in tactics. So widely had the troops been scattered, and in such small detachments, to meet the requirements of the country’s extensive frontiers, that there were colonels who had never seen their entire regiments.

This concentration afforded opportunity for practical professional instruction and discipline which was appreciated and availed of. But with this preparatory work there were amusements, and lasting friendships were formed; perhaps a few equally lasting enmities. Game and fish abounded. There were no settlements; the country was absolutely wild. Within a few hours’ ride of the camps were wild turkeys in flocks of twenty to forty; deer and antelope were numerous, and not far afield were vast droves of wild mustangs. Wolves and coyotes were everywhere, and occasionally a Mexican lion (cougar) was found. Many of the young officers became expert hunters. Muzzle-loading shot-guns were used mainly; there were no breech-loaders in those days. The camp tables fairly groaned with game dishes; wild turkey and venison finally so palled upon many of the soldiers as actually to become distasteful, and the old reliable beef and pork of the commissariat was resorted to in preference.

Wild horses were lassoed and brought into camp by Mexicans and tame Indians, and sold to the Americans for two or three dollars a head. An extra good animal would sometimes bring twelve dollars, which was the tip-top price. A good many were purchased by the quartermaster for the use of the army, and proved very serviceable. These animals looked something like the Norman breed; they had heavy manes and tails, and were much more powerful than the plains ponies farther north of a later date. They foraged for themselves and flourished where the American horse would deteriorate and soon die.

It was not until Grant came East during the Civil War that Longstreet began fully to appreciate his military ability. Grant’s successes at Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg were but vaguely understood in the Army of Northern Virginia, where they were mainly ascribed to bad generalship on the Confederate side, and some blundering good luck on Grant’s part.

Lieutenant Grant, of the Fourth, had acquired great reputation at the Military Academy as an expert horseman. He was always the show rider upon great occasions. He greatly added to this reputation at Corpus Christi. He was regimental quartermaster, and had much to do with these horses. He bought several of the better class for his own use. While riding one and leading the others to water one day, just before the army moved to the Rio Grande, his colored servant lost the whole bunch, or perhaps sold them for his own account. He claimed that, throwing him off, they jerked loose and stampeded away. There was a joke among the boys that, upon being told of the incident, General Taylor humorously remarked, “Yes, I understand Mr. Grant lost five or six dollars’ worth of horses recently,” satirically referring to their extraordinary cheapness. Grant declined to buy more horses for his private use. Soon after, the army advanced to the Rio Grande, and foot officers had no use for horses.

The unpretentious Grant was soon famous throughout the army as a “bronco buster,” in the sense the term is now familiarly used. He would unhesitatingly mount and soon bring to terms the most vicious of wildhorses. On horseback he was a very centaur. In no other manner could an animal unhorse Grant than by lying down and rolling over. A large group of interested officers one day had opportunity to observe his success in dealing with an unbroken horse. An Indian had brought to camp a splendid specimen which had struck Grant’s fancy, and for which he paid the record price of twelve dollars. It seemed to prance on springs of steel; its beautiful head was carried on high, and the noble eyes shot sparks of fire. While two grooms held it by lariats from either side, Grant blindfolded the stallion. Then the regulation accoutrements of Spanish saddle and heavy-bitted bridle were adjusted, and Grant mounted, his heels armed with an enormous pair of Mexican spurs.

Thus blindfolded, the beautiful animal had stood stock still, trembling like an aspen. The instant his eyes were uncovered he sprang forward like a shot. Grant held his seat firmly. Then the horse began to “buck,”—that is, to jump high into the air, at the same moment suddenly crooking his back upward with intent to throw off his burden. This was repeated time after time, of course without dislodging Grant, who was up to that sort of thing. The proceeding was greeted by the by-standers with shouts of laughter and yells of “Hang on, Grant,” “Don’t let him down you, old boy,” etc. The animal presently tired of this work, and at the proper juncture the cool-headed rider vigorously applied the spurs, at the same time loosening the rein, when the stallion plunged straight forward at a breakneck pace through the chaparral and cacti of the plain. The soldiers watched them until they disappeared, and the uninitiated wondered if they should ever see Grant alive again. Two hours later they returned at a slow walk, both exhausted, the horse’s head down and his sides wet with sweat and foam. He was conquered, andwas thereafter as docile as any well-trained American horse.

When not on duty, Grant’s chief amusement at Corpus Christi was horseback riding. He was no sportsman, and only occasionally played “brag” for small stakes. Longstreet’s classmate, Lieutenant Benjamin, of the Fourth Artillery, came in one day with a story about Grant’s one attempt at gunning for turkeys. The two, on a short leave with other officers, had made a journey on horseback to Austin late in the fall of 1845, accompanying a train of supplies. Returning, the party was reduced to three,—Benjamin, Grant, and Lieutenant Augur, afterwards major-general in the Union army. Augur fell sick and was left at Goliad, to be picked up by a train following. At Goliad Grant and Benjamin went out to shoot turkeys. Benjamin was a good shot and soon returned to camp with several fine birds. He found Grant already in, but without any game. The latter said that a large flock of turkeys had taken flight in twos and threes from branches of the pecan-trees overhead, some of them calmly looking at him several moments before taking wing. He had watched them with much interest until the last turkey had disappeared. Then it suddenly occurred to him that he had come out to shoot turkeys. “I concluded, Benjamin, from this circumstance,” explained Grant, with much chagrin, “that I was not cut out for a sportsman, so I returned to the house, confident you would bring in plenty of birds.” This explanation was offered with the utmost simplicity, and Benjamin repeated it with much unction. Poor Benjamin did not live to see the heights of fame reached by the little lieutenant who did not know enough to shoot wild turkeys in 1845. He was killed at the storming of the city of Mexico, September 13, 1847.

These anecdotes of a distinguished man naturallyfind place in a potpourri paper of this kind, but their special purpose is to show Grant’s personal characteristics, and in some sort the estimate placed upon him by his comrades of sixty years ago. But in those days the young fellows of the army fooled away no time in estimating upon the intellectual capacity of even the most promising associate. Grant was just simply an unobtrusive, every-day second lieutenant, without special promise or remarkable traits. It must be said that no one looked upon him then as the coming great man of the greatest war of civilized times. Rather quiet, seldom seeking crowds, Grant nevertheless enjoyed his friends, and among them was both a voluble and interesting talker. The alleged taciturnity of the later time was assumed to shut off busybodies—it was only judicious reticence. He was quickly known as a very brave and enterprising soldier in action, and, in fact, distinguished himself under both Taylor and Scott. He and Longstreet were intimate friends from 1839 through the seven years ending with the Mexican War, and often met in friendliest relations after the Civil War. Grant never forgot a friend in need.

It was not until Grant came East during the Civil War that Longstreet began to fully appreciate his military ability. Grant’s successes at Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg were but vaguely understood in the Army of Northern Virginia, where they were mainly ascribed to bad generalship on the Confederate side, and some blundering good luck on Grant’s part. But after the war was over and access was had to the inside history of those events, Longstreet soon perceived that the Vicksburg campaign was one of the greatest in military history, and that Pemberton’s destruction was almost wholly due to Grant’s bold conception of the military requirements to fulfil the expectations of his government.

Longstreet had been near by when Grant attacked and defeated Bragg at Chattanooga, and also thought that victory was largely due to overwhelming numbers and Bragg’s incapacity to perceive the impending storm. Longstreet wrote to General Lee from East Tennessee, some time in the winter of 1863–64, that he need have no fear of Grant, then presumptively booked for the Army of the Potomac; that he was overestimated, largely from his prestige acquired against inferior commanders, etc. But in the very beginning of the Wilderness campaign in 1864 the commander of the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia saw a power displayed in manœuvring the Army of the Potomac which the Confederates had never met before. There is no doubt that General Lee himself appreciated that he had a new and puzzling force to deal with. At the Wilderness Lee assumed the offensive the moment Grant crossed the Rapidan, essaying the same tactics that had been practised upon Hooker at Chancellorsville, but he failed. The Confederates withstood Grant in the Wilderness, but it was the last time General Lee attempted a general offensive. This was somewhat due to his inferior numbers and waning morale, but it was mainly because of Grant’s presence. The year before, after what was practically a drawn battle at Chancellorsville, Hooker, with double Lee’s force, withdrew across the river. He had between twenty-five thousand and thirty thousand men who had scarcely fired a gun in battle. Grant, with fewer men than Hooker, fought a larger Confederate army at the Wilderness. It, too, was no more than a drawn battle, yet Grant had no thought of recrossing the river to recuperate. He moved forward and immediately put General Lee on the defensive.

General Lee at last realized that the Confederacy’s only hope was defensive battle, and his fame as a Generalwill rest wholly on that campaign. If he had persisted in the tactics employed against Hooker and Pope and McClellan, his army would have been destroyed in ten days after the Wilderness. Grant really had the Army of Northern Virginia on the go on the morning of the 6th of May; it was saved from utter rout only by the timely arrival of the First Corps, which rolled back Hancock’s victorious lines upon the Brock road and beyond.

Among General Longstreet’s pleasant memories of camp life at Corpus Christi was a rude theatre erected by a joint stock company of the young officers, who acted in the plays produced on its boards, taking both male and female parts. Many roaring comedies were billed, and cheered the garrison from time to time. The enlisted men were of course permitted to pay the entrance fee and see the best that was going. General Worth was always a delighted auditor, General Taylor occasionally honored the entertainments with his presence, and General Twiggs rarely. After exhausting the field of comedy and having already reimbursed themselves for all outlays, the officers concluded to enter the more expensive and difficult field of tragedy. The first play chosen was the Moor of Venice. Lieutenant Porter, brother of Admiral Porter, was assigned the part of Othello, whilst Lieutenant Longstreet wasnominated for Desdemona; but upon inspection the manager protested that six feet dignified in crinoline would not answer even for a tragic heroine. So Longstreet was discarded and Grant substituted. Finally, after a rehearsal or two, Grant, too, had to give way under protests of Porter that male tragediennes could not give the proper sentiment to the play. Then the officers “chipped in” and sent to New Orleans for a real actress, and thereafter all went well. The play was pulled off eventually with as muchéclatas followed General Taylor’s first victory a few months later on the Rio Grande.

A volume could be filled with incidents of those sunny days on the Mexican Gulf, the incipient stage of the first campaign in real war for the young officers. They gave little heed of the morrow. Their pay was small, but their requirements were on even a less scale. There was a good deal of drilling, but otherwise their duties were far from onerous. A large proportion of the cadets Longstreet had known at West Point from 1838 to 1842 were there congregated, and old associations were renewed. Of course, all these officers were not intimates, but nearly all were personal acquaintances on the most friendly footing. Every one brought his share to the common aggregate of interest and pleasure.

Among the officers there collected who afterwards became prominent in the Union and Confederate armies, in addition to those already mentioned, were William J. Hardee, Thomas Jordan, John C. Pemberton, Braxton Bragg, Earl Van Dorn, Samuel G. French, Richard H. Anderson, Robert S. Garnett, Barnard E. Bee, Bushrod R. Johnson, Abram C. Myers, Lafayette McLaws, and E. Kirby Smith, of the Confederate service; and J. K. F. Mansfield, George G. Meade, Don Carlos Buell, George H. Thomas, N. J. T. Dana,Charles F. Smith, Joseph J. Reynolds, John F. Reynolds, Abner Doubleday, Alfred Pleasanton, Thomas J. Wood, Seth Williams, and George Sykes, distinguished Union generals in the Civil War. There were many others too numerous to mention. Longstreet afterwards met many of these officers as mortal foes on the field of battle. He served with others in the Confederate armies, and others served under him. McLaws and Pickett were long fighting division commanders in his corps.

Robert E. Lee, George B. McClellan, G. T. Beauregard, and Joseph E. Johnston were not with Taylor, and they and others, notably E. R. S. Canby, Isaac I. Stevens, and John G. Foster, did not join the army until Scott’s campaign opened in 1847, though it appears that Lee was with General Wool’s column in the movement towards Chihuahua. They were among the great names of the subsequent Civil War. Jefferson Davis, colonel of the Mississippi Rifles, joined Taylor after Scott had withdrawn the regulars, but in time to turn the tide of battle at Buena Vista. Altogether it was a brilliant roster. They were all graduates of the Military Academy. Of all the officers collected at Corpus Christi, it is doubtful if there is to-day a score of survivors. A large number were killed in action. A far greater number died of disease in the Mexican or Civil War campaigns.

Besides the long list of West Pointers, there were at Corpus Christi many regulars appointed from civil life, meritorious officers who afterwards made their mark. One of these was Lawrence P. Graham, a Virginian, already a captain in the Second Dragoons. He was some six years Longstreet’s senior. After Mexico Graham stuck to the old army, rose to the colonelcy of the Fourth Cavalry in 1864, and was a Union brigadier of volunteers. He had been in the army nearly tenyears when the Mexican War broke out. He still survives at the green old age of eighty-eight, a retired colonel since 1870, thirty-three years. He has been carried on the rolls of the United States army nearly sixty-seven years. That is one of the rewards for having been lucky enough to espouse the winning side in 1861. But self-interest had little to do with the choice of sides; conscience pointed the way in that hour of passion.

The reunion at Corpus Christi made a deep impression upon the fledglings of the service. The long encampment there formed a green spot in the memory of the little army that bore our colors in triumph to the city of Mexico. Those who have left memoirs of their military careers have to a man dwelt largely upon the various interesting, though generally unimportant, incidents of this delightful episode. March, 1846, brought the hour of their ending; on the 9th the bugles of the line sounded the assembly, and in obedience to instructions from Washington General Taylor put his army in motion by easy stages for the line of the Rio Grande River. That movement immediately produced a result which the government had long secretly desired,—war. Negotiations for the amicable possession of Texas and the territory to the Pacific had failed.

It is not the purpose of this paper to write the history of the Mexican War, but a few of its salient features may be recounted perhaps with profit.

Under the Texas treaty of annexation and the act admitting Texas into the American Union the United States claimed all the territory down to the Rio Grande and westward to the border of New Mexico. Mexico, on her part, denied that Texas was a free agent, although President Santa Anna, captured by the Texans the next day after the battle of San Jacinto in 1836, while in durance had consented to a treaty which acknowledged Texan independence. Texas had adopteda constitution and set up an independent government. Mexico repudiated Santa Anna’s agreement, but nevertheless had subsequently never been able to conquer the lost territory. The entrance of the American troops into Texas was therefore by Mexico considered acasus belli, and her troops, under General Arista, crossed the river and began aggressive war upon the United States detachments as soon as they reached the vicinity.

The Mexican General Torrejon captured a detachment of United States dragoons April 25, including Captains Thornton and Hardee and Lieutenant Kane, besides killing Lieutenant George J. Mason and sixteen men. Mason was a classmate of Longstreet. Thornton, Hardee, and Kane were well treated, and soon after exchanged. Small bands of Mexicans committed other depredations. Shortly after the unfortunate incident above recited, Lieutenant Theodoric Porter and a small party were fired upon from an ambuscade in the chaparral, and Porter and one soldier killed. Porter had been one of the theatrical stars at Corpus Christi.

The march to Point Isabel, the siege of Fort Brown by General Ampudia, and the stirring affairs at Palo Alto and Resaca soon followed. The spirit ofcamaraderieand patriotic zeal which animated the Army of Occupation was vividly illustrated when Captain Charles May was ordered by Taylor, at Resaca de la Palma, to charge a Mexican battery. As May drew up his own and Graham’s squadrons for the work, Lieutenant Randolph Ridgely, of Ringgold’s artillery, called out, “Hold on, Charlie, till I draw their fire,” and he “turned loose” with his six guns upon the enemy. The return fire was prompt, but Ridgely’s wise purpose was accomplished. Then the invincible heroism with which May rushed forward at the head of a handful of the Second Dragoons signalized the qualities whichunerringly foreshadowed the result of that war. The opposing battery was secured in the twinkling of an eye, and the Mexican General La Vega captured amid his guns. May’s gallant exploit was the theme of the army. May, Ridgely, and Longstreet were close friends, of the trio Longstreet being youngest in years and service. Ridgely was killed at Monterey that fall. May lived until 1864, having resigned in 1861. He took no part in the Civil War. The first successes of the Mexican War were easy and decisive. The real hardships began with the march over the sterile wastes towards Monterey. Monterey was equally as decisive, but it was found to be a much harder nut to crack, and here the American losses were very heavy. The general effect of Taylor’s operations, in conjunction with Wolf’s campaign and the overland march of General Kearny to California, was demoralizing to the Mexicans.

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