The world was before me, nothing to leave behind me, except parents, brothers, sisters and friends. I concluded to follow that inclination by enlisting in Capt. William F. Small's Co. C, First Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, to serve during the war with Mexico unless sooner discharged.
Our regiment was, fortunately, attached to Gen. Scott's army, who dared to invade the soil of the Montezumas and teach an arrogant foe the bloody lessons of war, and dictate to over six millions of people the terms of the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo.
After the close of that war we returned home with impaired health—many without friends and relatives; shattered with a disease, contracted in a strange country and a hot climate, which, in a few years after the war, had taken from their homes more than one-half of those who returned.
Some of our comrades have been fitly rewarded, by a grateful people, to the highest position in the gift of our people.
Gens. Zachariah Taylor, Frank Pierce and Ulysess S. Grant have been elected to the Presidency of the United States. Others, who, probably, were less ambitious, have found in the pursuit of private life a congenial occupation, and content with the reputation of their past deeds, desire to be known as citizens of good report and as veterans of the Mexican War.
The soldiers who fought through fire and blood from Vera Cruz to the capital of Mexico—a distance of nearly three hundred miles, which had to be fought foot by foot until the towers of the halls of Montezumas were stormed and taken, without a single retreat or defeat—have a just cause to be proud of their participation in that eventful struggle; and by their valor they subdued an insolent foe and greatly widened the area of nearly three hundred and sixty-four million acres of land to the government which called them to its assistance.
During this triumphant and memorable campaign, the author of this book kept a journal, and noted down every day's proceedings, from the first day of his enlistment until
