not care to make himself responsible for such a result. So he held back until direct orders came from Washington in March, 1846, when he at once marched to the Rio Grande, and built Fort Brown opposite the Mexican town of Matamoros.

The expected consequences followed. The Mexicans ordered Taylor to retire, and when he refused they crossed the Rio Grande to drive him out. They soon found that they had the wrong man to deal with. Two small fights followed on the 8th and 9th of May, in both of which the Mexicans were defeated, and when they retreated across the river Taylor followed and seized the town of Matamoros. Congress had voted him its thanks and made him a majorgeneral for the two victories he had won.

President Polk, who wanted war, had hastened to declare that American soil had been invaded and to call for volunteers. But it was September before any of these reached Taylor and made him strong enough to march into the country of the enemy. As soon as the men reached him he advanced to Monterey, a strongly fortified and garrisoned Mexican town. The struggle here was a severe one. After forcing the walls, the Americans found the streets so strongly defended that they had to enter the houses and break a passage through from house to house until the centre square was reached. This done, the Mexicans retreated, leaving the town in Taylor's hands.

Another long and vain wait for troops followed, lasting seven weeks, when Taylor, weary of waiting, again advanced and on December 2 occupied the city of Victoria. He was now in a dangerous situation, having marched far from the frontier and having a long line of communication to defend with a meagre

force. He waited still for reinforcements that did not come. The administration at Washington was jealous of him for political reasons and held back troops until in the end he was obliged to fall back upon Monterey. During this reverse movement his regulars were taken from him to join the new expedition under General Scott, leaving him only five thousand volunteers.

The politicians at Washington had put Taylor in a position of the greatest danger. Santa Anna, Mexico's ablest general, had learned of Taylor's weakened condition and advanced against him with a force of more than twenty thousand regular troops. Marching with the utmost haste, he overtook the small American force near the mountain pass of Buena Vista, where Taylor, brought to bay, selected a strong position and stationed his men and guns to the greatest advantage.

Clouds of dust soon revealed the coming of the Mexicans, and Santa Anna, confident in his numbers, sent a staff-officer with a flag of truce demanding a surrender.

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General Taylor never surrenders," was the blunt answer the veteran sent back.

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Then, mounted on his favorite white horse and in the rusty uniform he usually wore, he rode along the ranks and said to his men: Soldiers, I intend to remain here, not only as long as a man remains, but as long as a piece of a man is left."

The battle that followed was a long and fierce one, the mountain defiles reverberating with the roar of artillery and volleys of musketry, and with the thunder of hoofs as the clouds of Mexican cavalry rushed upon the thin American lines. But the volunteers held their ground bravely.

"Give them a little more grape, Captain Bragg,' was Taylor's famous order to a captain of artillery at a critical moment in the battle, and the torrent of grape-shot hurled the Mexicans back in dismay.

The struggle was fierce and hotly contested, but in the end Taylor won. Over seven hundred of the Americans had been killed or wounded, but the Mexican loss was nearly three times as great, and Santa Anna was glad to withdraw with his shattered troops. He had cornered old "Rough and Ready" but had found him prepared to fight like a bulldog for his ground. This battle was fought on the 22d of February, 1847, the anniversary of Washington's birth.

The news of Taylor's victory at Buena Vista was received with the wildest enthusiasm in the United States. Taylor was praised as one of the greatest soldiers and became the most popular man in the country. There was something spectacular in his dogged stand against his foe and the hurling back of a force four times his numbers. The sobriquet of Rough and Ready" given him by his soldiers endeared him to the masses, and when he returned home in the following November he was received like a Roman general returning to a Triumph.

Taylor was a Whig in politics, which had been the reason of the opposition to him of the Democratic Polk administration. In June, 1848, when the Whig nominating convention was held, the leaders took advantage of his popularity and nominated him for President. In the November election that followed he was triumphantly elected over two opponents. General Harrison, an old soldier, had been the first Whig President; General Taylor, another old soldier, was the second and last.

The whole business was an error, and Taylor was made a victim of his political supporters. He was a good soldier, but not fit to be a President, as he himself declared. His education had been very little, his life had been spent in the army, and he had not cast a vote for nearly forty years. He knew almost nothing of history or of international affairs. Statesmanship was an unknown field to him, and the burden of his new duties was too heavy for him to bear. There were friends ready to write his speeches and prepare his public documents, yet the persistence of office-seekers, the slavery quarrel then going on in Congress, the weight of public duties, worried him greatly, and probably hastened his death. As President he had the welfare of the country at heart, but his term was not long, for after he had been in office little over a year, a severe cold led to a fatal sickness, and he died July 5, 1850.

Thus the kindly and faithful old soldier laid down the burden of life in the President's chair as another old soldier had done nine years before. They were both made the victims of political self-seekers, borne down with the weight of duties for which Nature had not intended them.

GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN, FIRST COMMANDER OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC

AFTER the disastrous battle of Bull Run, the first great engagement in the Civil War, when the frightened officials at Washington looked anxiously around for some man suitable to take command of the beaten and disorganized army, they selected the general who had been winning brilliant successes in Western Virginia, George Brinton McClellan, the only man who had yet made his mark in the war.

They could not have done better under the circumstances, for McClellan thoroughly knew the art of making soldiers out of raw material, and nothing at that time was more needed. It was in July, 1861, that he took hold, and before the year ended he had so fully drilled, equipped, and organized the broken troops that he had under his command a well-disciplined body of soldiers made out of an untrained mob of militia. He had also won the love and admiration of his men to an extent not attained by any other general in the war, for he possessed in a high degree the power of inspiring those around him with such feelings, and no man who served under McClellan ever lost his esteem for "Little Mac," as they loved to call him. On the Ist of November, when the veteran General Scott gave up his post as commander-in-chief of the armies, General McClellan was appointed to take his place. He had reached the highest military command the Government had to give.