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