CHAPTER VIII. 



1846. 



GENERAL TAYLOR ORDERED TO THE RIO GRANDE. HISTORY OF 



TEXAN BOUNDARIES. ORIGIN OF THE WAR. MILITARY PRE- 

 PARATIONS COMMENCEMENT OF HOSTILITIES. BATTLES OF 



PALO ALTO AND RESACA. MATAMOROS TAYLOR'S ADVANCE. 



FALL OF MONTEREY. 



Whilst Slidell was negotiating, and, in consequence of the 

 anticipated failure of his effort to be received, — as was clearly 

 indicated by the conduct of the Mexican government upon his arri- 

 val in the capital, — General Taylor, who had been stationed at 

 Corpus Christi, in Texas, since the fall of 1845, with a body of 

 regular troops, was directed, on the 13th of January, 1846, to move 

 his men to the mouth of the Rio Grande. He, accordingly left his 

 encampment on the 8th of March, and, on the 25th, reached Point 

 Isabel, having encountered no serious opposition on the way. The 

 march to the Rio Grande has been made the subject of complaint 

 by politicians in Mexico and the United States, who believed that 

 the territory lying between that river and the Nueces, was not the 

 property of Texas. But inasmuch as Mexico still continued vehe- 

 mently to assert her political right over the whole of Texas, the 

 occupation of any part of its soil, south of the Sabine, by American 

 troops, was in that aspect of the case, quite as much an infringe- 

 ment of Mexican sovereignty, as the march of our troops, from the 

 Nueces to the Rio Grande. 



As it is important that the reader should understand the original 

 title to Louisiana, under which the boundary of the Rio Grande, 

 was claimed, first of all for that state, and, subsequently, for Texas, 

 we shall relate its history in a summary manner. 



Louisiana had been the property of France, and by a secret con- 

 tract between that country and Spain in 1762, as well as by treaties 

 between France, Spain, and England, in the following year, the 

 French dominion was extinguished on the continent of America. 

 In consequence of the treaty between this country and England in 

 1783, the Mississippi became the western boundary of the United 

 States, from its source to the thirty-first degree of north latitude, 



