To the Halls of Montezuma 307that he had never bothered to cast a ballot in an
election. Polk believed that he lacked the “grasp of
mind” necessary for high command, and General
Scott complained of his “comfortable, laborsaving
contempt for learning of every kind.” But Taylor
commanded the love and respect of his men (they
called him “Old Rough and Ready” and even
“Zack”), and he knew how to deploy them in the
field. He had won another victory against a Mexican
force three times larger than his own at Buena Vista
in February 1847.
The dust had barely settled on the field of
Buena Vista when Whig politicians began to pay
Taylor court. “Great expectations and great conse-
quences rest upon you,” a Kentucky politician
explained to him. “People everywhere begin to talk
of converting you into a political leader, when the
War is done.”
Polk’s concern was heightened because domes-
tic opposition to the war was growing. Many
Northerners feared that the war would lead to the
expansion of slavery. Others—among them an
obscure Illinois congressman named Abraham
Lincoln—felt that Polk had misled Congress about
the original outbreak of fighting and that the
United States was the aggressor. The farther from
the Rio Grande one went in the United States, the
less popular “Mr. Polk’s war” became; in New
England opposition was almost as widespread as it
had been to “Mr. Madison’s war” in 1812.
Polk’s design for prosecuting the war consisted
of three parts. First, he would clear the Mexicans
from Texas and occupy the northern provinces of
Mexico. Second, he would take possession of
California and New Mexico. Finally, he would march
on Mexico City. Proceeding west from the Rio
Grande, Taylor swiftly overran Mexico’s northern
provinces. In June 1846, American settlers in the
Sacramento Valley seized Sonoma and raised the Bear
Flag of the Republic of California. Another group,This image depicts the Battle of Chapultepec(1847). At the right are
portraits of six fifteen-year-old cadets at the military school at
Chapultepec Castle who committed suicide rather than surrender to
the American attackers.