Chapter VII




Captain Lee at the Front


Astonishing as General Taylor's success had been, the authorities
at Washington decided, largely for political reasons, to appoint
a new commander, and three months after the battle of Monterey,
General Winfield Scott, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States
army, was ordered to the seat of the war.

It would be impossible to imagine two officers more utterly different
than Taylor and Scott, but each in his own way exerted a profound
influence upon the careers of Grant and Lee. Taylor was a rough,
uncultivated man, fearless, shrewd and entirely capable, but with
nothing to suggest the soldier in his appearance, dress or dignity.
On the contrary, he usually appeared sitting slouchily on some
woe-begone old animal, his long legs dangling on one side of the
saddle, the bridle rein looped over his arm and a straw hat on his
head, more like a ploughman than an officer of high rank. Indeed,
he seldom donned a uniform of any description, and his only known
appearance in full dress occurred during an official meeting with
an admiral, when, out of regard for naval etiquette, he attired
himself in his finest array. But this effort at politeness was not