The Training Ground by Martin Dugard Read Free Book Online

necessary.
    Britain and France formally requested that Texas take at least ninety days to study all sides of the annexation issue. Texas president Jones, who reveled in being at the center of all the international wheeling and dealing, agreed. He saw the two European powers as allies — Britain in particular — to the point that he became blinded to the reality that their interests were entirely self-motivated. “Texas was then a rich jewel lying derelict by the way. She was without a friend who thought her of sufficient consequence to take her by her hand and assist her in her accumulated misfortunes,” Jones later wrote. “Guided by her interests and a far-reaching policy, England had become such a friend.”
    For his part, Mexican president General José Joaquín de Herrera feared war with America. Land speculators had flooded into Texas during 1844, bringing the non-Mexican population up to one hundred thousand — a formidable number of people allied against his nation. But for the sake of appearance, Herrera could not bend to American pressure. Polk didn’t help matters any by opening diplomatic talks with a proclamation that the only issue not open to discussion was Texas.
    As tensions mounted between the United States and Mexico, international opinion came down solidly on Mexico’s side. The
Times
of London wrote of “the enormous wrong done to Mexico by this aggression of the United States, and the probable consequences of that wrong to British interests.” On May 17, in Mexico City, the Mexican government initialed a British-brokered treaty recognizing Texas as an independent republic. President Jones began playing both sides against the middle, using the diplomats of Britain and France as power brokers, seeking to gain the best deal for his nation as he decided whether independence or annexation was the wiser move. But on June 4, Herrera reneged. He once again stated that Texas rightfully belonged to Mexico. He ordered his army to assemble for war.
    Polk did the same. He commanded Brevet Brigadier General Zachary Taylor to march the American army on Texas.
    T AYLOR, A SHORT and fiery second cousin to former president James Madison, went by the nickname Old Rough and Ready. “In his manners and in his appearance, he is one of the commonest people in the country,” marveled one of Taylor’s fellow generals. “Perfectly temperate in his habits, perfectly plain in his dress, entirely unassuming in his manners, he appears to be an old gentleman in fine health, whose thoughts are not turned upon his personal appearance, and who has no point about him to attract particular attention. In his intercourse with men, he is free, frank, and manly; he plays off none of the airs of great men I have met, and the more closely his character is examined the greater beauties it discloses.”
    Taylor had been raised on the Kentucky frontier and had little formal education, and he possessed such disdain for military decorum that he almost never dressed in uniform. Yet he was an officer through and through. The sixty-year-old Taylor had been thoroughly schooled in the art of warfare during a military career spanning almost four decades and a vast assortment of armed conflicts that ran the gamut from the somewhat conventional battles of the War of 1812 to the guerrilla engagements of the Seminole Wars. War with Mexico, with its European-trained generals and vast spaces, would likely mean a little of both. Old Rough and Ready was the ideal man for the job.
    D ESPITE ITS TICKS and mosquitoes, Camp Salubrity (as the bivouac near Fort Jesup was known) turned out to be a relatively pleasant posting. Grant even gave the Louisiana woods credit for improving his health. “I kept a horse and rode, and stayed out of doors most of the time by day, and entirely recovered from the cough which I had carried from West Point, and from all indications of consumption,” he wrote.
    The commander was Colonel Josiah H. Vose, an older man