. A new President,
General Santa Anna, had been raised to power, and under his vigorous
administration the war threatened to assume a phase sufficiently
embarrassing to the United States.

Jackson had been attached to a heavy battery, and his first duty was
to transport guns and mortars to the forts which protected Point
Isabel. The prospect of immediate employment before the enemy was
small. Operations had come to a standstill. It was already apparent
that a direct advance upon the capital, through the northern
provinces, was an enterprise which would demand an army much larger
than the Government was disposed to furnish. It seemed as if the
First Artillery had come too late. Jackson was fearful that the war
might come to an end before his regiment should be sent to the front.
The shy cadet had a decided taste for fighting. "I envy you men," he
said to a comrade more fortunate than himself,* (* Lieutenant D.H.
Hill, afterwards his brother-in-law.) "who have been in battle. How I
should like to be in ONE battle!" His longing for action was soon
gratified. Mexico had no navy and a long sea-board. The fleet of the
United States was strong, their maritime resources ample, and to land
an army on a shorter route to the distant capital was no difficult
undertaking.

1847.

General Winfield Scott, who had been sent out as commander-in-chief,
was permitted, early in 1847, to organise a combined naval and
military expedition for the reduction of Vera Cruz, the principal
port of the Republic, whence a good road leads to Mexico. The line of
advance would be thus reduced to two hundred and sixty miles; and the
natural obstacles, though numerous enough, were far less serious than
the deserts which barred invasion from the north. For this enterprise
most of the regular regiments were withdrawn from the Rio Grande; and
General Taylor, the hero of Palo Alto and Monterey, was left with a
small army, composed principally of volunteers, to hold the conquered
provinces. Scott's troops assembled in the first instance at Tampico.
The transports, eighty in number, having embarked their freight, were
directed to rendezvous in the road stead of Lobos, one hundred and
twenty miles north of Vera Cruz; and when the whole had assembled,
the fleet set sail for Los Sacrificios, the island where Cortez had
landed in 1520, three miles south of the city. The army of invasion,
in which the First Regiment of Artillery was included, consisted of
13,00