except that a lack of men to execute operations had left them, as the head of the corps admitted, too much like theoretical mariners. A few well-trained topographical engineers, a small medical staff, and a quartermaster's department rounded out this miniature army. Nearly all the infantry carried flint-lock muskets, and numerous defects and deficiencies existed; but probably the forces were better equipped for service than has generally been supposed In View of possible difficulties with Mexico, a disproportionate share of the troops were placed at or near Fort Jesup on the western border of Louisiana; and in June, 1845, these included the Third Infantry, eight companies of the Fourth Infantry, and seven companies of the Second Dragoons.[1]
Their commander was Brevet Brigadier General Zachary Taylor. This child of destiny, born in 1784, had grown up and gained some rudiments of an education amidst the Indian troubles of the Kentucky border. At the age of twenty-three he had been commissioned first lieutenant in the Seventh Infantry, and alter showing remarkable coolness and intrepidity in two small affairs during our second war with England and the Black Hawk War, he had won a stubborn fight in 1837 against the Seminoles at the head of some 1100 soldiers. Three years later he was assigned to a supervising command in the southwest, and this included Fort Jesup.[2]
Personally Taylor possessed a strong character, a very strong character, neither exhausted by self-indulgence nor weakened by refinement and study He was every inch a man, with a great heart, a mighty will, a profound belief in himself, and a profound belief in human nature. The makings of a hero lay in him, and to a large extent the making had been done. He was gifted, too, with solid common sense, not a little shrewdness and ambition, a thorough knowledge of men — the sort of men that he knew at all — a military eye, and a cool, resourceful intelligence that was always at work in its own rather ponderous fashion. The sharp gray eyes and the contraction of his brows that made the upper part of his face look severe were tempered by the benignity of the lower part; and the occasional glimmer of a twinkle betokened humor.[3]
On the other hand, everything about him suggested the backwoodsman. His thick-set and rather corpulent body,
