Mexico was indignant at seeing Texas, which she still claimed as one of her provinces, about to enter the union. As soon as the Annexation Bill was passed by the United States Congress, Don Juan Almonte, formerly aide-de-camp to General Santa Anna, now the Mexican minister at Washington, D.C., was recalled, and preparations for war were begun on a grand scale in Mexico.  
137
In the meantime, the United States government had sent General Zachary Taylor to Corpus Christi on the Texas coast, with four thousand troops. He was ordered to march westward and take up a position on the Rio Grande River, the boundary line between Texas and Mexico. He was further ordered to confine himself to Texas soil unless the Mexicans should attempt to cross the river.
 
In the spring of 1846 General Taylor began his march across the country, “which appeared like one vast garden wavy with flowers of the most gorgeous dyes.”[33] Then came a desert-like waste in which there was neither water nor any growing thing. “The sand was like hot ashes, and when you stepped upon it, you sank up to the ankles.”[33]
 
But the region beyond the desert was fertile and inviting. At the Sal Colorado, a stream thirty miles east of the Rio Grande, some Mexican soldiers appeared. They insisted that all the country west of the Colorado belonged to Mexico, and declared that if the Americans attempted to cross that stream they would fire upon them. General Taylor paid no attention whatever to their threats. He led his troops over the Sal Colorado without further trouble and continued his march toward the Rio Grande.
 
There the war began in real earnest. The first battle was fought at Fort Brown (now Brownsville), opposite Matamoras. The Americans were victorious. Two other successful engagements, Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, took place on Texas territory. Then General Taylor, having received large reinforcements, entered Mexico and marched upon Monterey, the great interior city of northern Mexico.
 
About this time Santa Anna, who had been in exile and disgrace, returned to Mexico, and was immediately made commander-in-chief of the Mexican army.
 
138
Texas furnished her share of men for the war upon her hereditary foe. Governor Henderson himself entered the campaign as a major-general of volunteers; ex-President Lamar and Edward Burleson served upon his staff. Albert Sidney Johnston commanded a regiment. “Jack” Hays and George T. Wood, afterward governor of Texas, were also in command of regiments. Ben McCulloch carried into the war a company of rangers.
 
The Texans were in the van in every battle. At the storming of Monterey they especially distinguished themselves by their daring and high courage. A participator in the siege of the city says: “In order to dislodge the skirmishers from the housetops, the Texans rushed from door to door, breaking through buildings and inside walls; and, mounting to a level with the enemy, picked them off with their rifles. Meanwhile those in the streets charged from square to square amid sweeping showers of grape, cheered on by Lamar, Henderson, and Jefferson Davis of the Mississippi regiment.” The next day “the artillery on both sides raked the streets, the balls striking the houses with a terrible crash, while amid the roar of cannon was heard the battering instruments of the Texans. Doors were forced open, walls were battered down, entrances were made through stone and brick, and the enemy were driven from point to point, followed by the sharp crack of the Texan rifles.”
 
General Ampudia, who had so basely betrayed the trust of the Texans after their surrender at Mier in 1843, was in command of the Mexican forces. After three days of desperate fighting he surrendered the city of Monterey to General Taylor.
 
The officers commissioned by Taylor to draw up the articles of capitulation on the American side were Generals Worth and Henderson (governor of Texas) and Colonel Jefferson Davis.
 
Texas furnished above eight thousand soldiers for this war, and the “murderous ring of the Texan rifle” was heard on almost every field.
 
139
In New Mexico, where there was considerable fighting, the cannon taken from General McLeod in the fatal Sante Fé expedition in 1841 was discovered by the American soldiers, where it had been hidden in the mountains. “It is,” says the record, “a six-pounder, bearing the ‘Lone Star’ of Texas and the name of her ex-President, Mirabeau B. Lamar.” The Americans adopted it as a favorite, and used it in firing their morning and evening signals. The Lo............