Both the strategy and tactics displayed by General Scott in these various engagements of the 20th of August, 1847, were faultless as I look upon them now, after the lapse of so many years.  As before stated, the work of the engineer officers who made the reconnoissances and led the different commands to their destinations, was so perfect that the chief was able to give his orders to his various subordinates with all the precision he could use on an ordinary march.  I mean, up to the points from which the attack was to commence.  After that point is reached the enemy often induces a change of orders not before contemplated.  The enemy outside the city outnumbered our soldiery quite three to one, but they had become so demoralized by the succession of defeats this day, that the City of Mexico could have been entered without much further bloodshed.  In fact, Captain Philip Kearney —­afterwards a general in the war of the rebellion—­rode with a squadron of cavalry to the very gates of the city, and would no doubt have entered with his little force, only at that point he was badly wounded, as were several of his officers.  He had not heard the call for a halt.

General Franklin Pierce had joined the army in Mexico, at Puebla, a short time before the advance upon the capital commenced.  He had consequently not been in any of the engagements of the war up to the battle of Contreras.  By an unfortunate fall of his horse on the afternoon of the 19th he was painfully injured.  The next day, when his brigade, with the other troops engaged on the same field, was ordered against the flank and rear of the enemy guarding the different points of the road from San Augustin Tlalpam to the city, General Pierce attempted to accompany them.  He was not sufficiently recovered to do so, and fainted.  This circumstance gave rise to exceedingly unfair and unjust criticisms of him when he became a candidate for the Presidency.  Whatever General Pierce’s qualifications may have been for the Presidency, he was a gentleman and a man of courage.  I was not a supporter of him politically, but I knew him more intimately than I did any other of the volunteer generals.

General Scott abstained from entering the city at this time, because Mr. Nicholas P. Trist, the commissioner on the part of the United States to negotiate a treaty of peace with Mexico, was with the army, and either he or General Scott thought—­probably both of them—­that a treaty would be more possible while the Mexican government was in possession of the capital than if it was scattered and the capital in the hands of an invader.  Be this as it may, we did not enter at that time.  The army took up positions along the slopes of the mountains south of the city, as far west as Tacubaya.  Negotiations were at once entered into with Santa Anna, who was then practically the government and the immediate commander of all the troops engaged in defence of the country.  A truce was signed which denied to either party the right to strengthen its position, or to receive reinforcements during the continuance of the armistices, but authorized General Scott to draw supplies for his army from the city in the meantime.