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[57] formed to lead a charge of cavalry straight to the point of attack, courageous, stubborn, and as inflexible in matters of discipline as he was unsparing toward himself, had been surnamed by his soldiers ‘the Bull of the Woods.’ Always keeping clear of politics and faithful to his flag, we find him in 1857 dispersing the legislature of Kansas in the name of the then pro-slavery government of Washington, with as much ardor as he displayed in defending the national cause in the army of the Potomac in 1862. Kearny, chivalrously brave and passionately fond of the military profession, always discontented with his superior officers, except when ordered to attack the enemy, had accompanied our army to Algeria in 1840, in the Medeah expedition, and had subsequently returned to Europe to follow that army in the campaign of Italy. At the battle of Contreras, rushing with one hundred horse in pursuit of the fleeing Mexicans, he followed them as far as the gates of the city, where he lost an arm. Of all the officers of his squadron, one only, not less brave than himself, but more favored by fortune than the rest—Lieutenant Ewell—returned without a wound; and by another strange fatality, fifteen years later almost to a day, Kearny and himself were found each in a command of a division in the two contending armies on the battle-field of Chantilly, where the former was killed while vainly endeavoring to remedy the mistakes of his general; whilst the latter, always more fortunate, only lost a leg in that bloody conflict. In order to show how useful the Mexican campaign was in training generals for the civil war, it will suffice to say that among those officers who had the honor of receiving special mention in the despatches of General Scott, sixteen became generals in the Federal army, and fourteen in that of the Confederates. The American army remained some time longer in Mexico; it even received a reinforcement of twelve or fifteen thousand men, and these reserves, drilled and instructed under the assiduous care of Scott, soon rivalled in ardor and soldierly bearing the troops who had passed through all the trials of the campaign. The conqueror of Mexico was as much admired as he was envied. Some personages of distinction in the country, already in search of a foreign monarch, offered him the imperial crown of the Aztecs; and it is even asserted that this idea was for a
Philadelphia, Jos. H. Coates and co., 1876.
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