or was now promoted to the rank of major
general, and on May 18th took possession of Matamoros without
opposition.

On September 9th he arrived at Monterey with about six thousand seven
hundred men, chiefly volunteers. General Ampudia held the command here
with ten thousand regular Mexican troops. General Taylor assaulted his
position on September 19th, and after five days of almost continual
fighting General Ampudia surrendered. General Taylor then transferred
his headquarters to Monterey, but guarded the city of Saltillo with a
strong force. He was about making an advance on San Luis Potosi, when
a large portion of his force was ordered to join General Scott at Vera
Cruz.

Concentrating his forces, some five thousand in number, he learned
that General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was concentrating a force of
twenty thousand men at San Luis Potosi, with a view to attack him. On
February 21, 1847, he took position at a mountain pass called Buena
Vista, a few miles from Saltillo, where, being attacked the next day
by the Mexican army under General Santa Anna, he defeated them, and
Santa Anna retreated to San Luis Potosi. This brief statement of the
magnificent and almost unprecedented campaign of General Taylor is
necessary to understand the part taken by General Scott in the war
with Mexico.

General Scott was notified early in May, 1846, that he might be
ordered to assume the command on the Mexican frontier. He expressed
his disinclination to this duty, because it was, as he expressed it,
"harsh and unusual for a senior, without re-enforcements, to supersede
a meritorious junior, and that he doubted whether that was the right
season, or the Rio Grande the right basis, for offensive operations
against Mexico," and suggested a plan to conquer a peace, which he
afterward planned and executed. Political reasons to some extent
delayed action in sending General Scott to Mexico, and his views on
the proper campaign in Mexico were not approved by President Polk.
General Scott thought that unless his plan met the full approval and
support of the Government, it might result disastrously, and
expressed the sentiment, which became afterward a byword, that
"soldiers had a far greater dread of a fire upon the rear than of the
most formidable enemy in the front." The President declined to order
him to the command.

Pending these affairs, the Secretary of War one day called at General
Scott's office and found that he was absent.