Taylor.

it will clearly result that arms, and arms alone, must decide the question." As Taylor had been sent to Tamaulipas expressly to pro- duce this very result, he took occasion of this letter to hasten the desired crisis. The Mexicans had shown a for- bearance amounting almost to pusillanimity. Should this forbeai-ance continue, and the enemy remain on the other side of the river, how could the war be commenced ? He must wait for some pretext for crossing the river to attack them. The fact that the inhabitants of Point Isabel had fired their own houses, would hardly justify him in bom- barding Metamoras. He chose therefore to consider Am- pudia's notice to quit as an hostile act, but not one to be resented, with powder and shot. He therefore resorted to an expedient which would compel Ampudia to fire the first shot, and thus, according to the wishes of the Cabinet, to make the intended war, one of defence, "a war by the act of Mexico." There were two American armed vessels at Brazos Santiago, and these he ordered to blockade the mouth of the Rio Grande, thus cuttino^ off all commuication with Metamoras by sea. Soon after a ves- sel with a cargo of grain for the city, was prevented by the squadron from entering the river, and in consequence of the alarm excited by the blockade, Hour rose, as stated in the papers, to forty dollars a barrel. Taylor, with a frankness bordering on indiscretion, thus avows his reason for ordering the blockade : " It will at any rate compel the Mexicans to withdraw their army from Metamoras where it cannot b§ sustained, or to assume the offensive on this side of the river '"^ Yet in this very letter he reports that since his last of the loth, "the relations between me and the Mexicans have not changed," that is, the Mexicans had not commenced hostilities. Notwithstanding the blockade, the Mexicans did not attack Taylor; whereupon he deter- mined, it seems, not to remain any longer idle. Accord- ingly, the very day on which he informs the Secretary that the relations between hicaself and the Mexicans remained the same, and when not a single shot had been fired by the latter, he reports, " with a view to check the depredations of small parties of the enemy on this side of the river, Lieutenants Dobbins of the