of the regular army was not more than 8500 men; and the whole of this force, with the exception of a few batteries, was scattered in small detachments along the frontier.  The troops were never brought together in considerable bodies; and although they were well drilled and under the strictest discipline, neither the commanders nor the staff had the least experience of handling men in masses.  Many of the infantry officers had never drilled with a whole battalion since they left West Point.  A brigade of cavalry—­that is, two or three regiments working together as a single unit—­had never been assembled; and scarcely a single general had ever commanded a force composed of the three arms, either on service or on parade.  “During my twenty years of service on the frontier,” said one of the most famous of the Confederate leaders,* (* General R.S.  Ewell.) “I learned all about commanding fifty United States dragoons and forgot everything else.”

Nevertheless, this life of enterprise and hard work, the constant struggle against nature, for the illimitable space of the inhospitable wilderness was a more formidable antagonist than the stealthy savage, benefited the American soldier in more ways than one.  He grew accustomed to danger and privation.  He learned to use his wits; to adapt his means to his end; to depend on his intelligence rather than on rule.  Above all, even the most junior had experience of independent command before the enemy.  A ready assumption of responsibility and a prompt initiative distinguished the regular officers from the very outset of the Civil War; and these characteristics had been acquired on the western prairies.

But the warfare of the frontier had none of the glamour of the warfare which is waged with equal arms against an equal enemy, of the conflict of nation against nation.  To bring the foe to bay was a matter of the utmost difficulty.  A fight at close quarters was of rare occurrence, and the most successful campaign ended in the destruction of a cluster of dirty wigwams, or the surrender of a handful of starving savages.  In such unsatisfactory service Jackson was not called upon to take a part.  It is doubtful if he ever crossed the Mississippi.  His first experience of campaigning was to be on a field where gleams of glory were not wanting.  The ink on his commission was scarcely dry when the artillery subaltern was ordered to join his regiment, the First Artillery, in Mexico.  The war with the Southern Republic had blazed out on the Texan border in 1845, and the American Government had now decided to carry it into the heart of the hostile territory.  With the cause of quarrel we have no concern.  General Grant has condemned the war as “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."* (* Grant’s Memoirs volume 1 page 53.) Be this as it may, it is doubtful whether any of Grant’s brother officers troubled themselves at all with the equity of invasion.  It was enough for them that the expedition meant a