Santa Anna’s full brigade of lancers flanked the Americans, and now at the sound of their trumpets, the Mexican infantry advanced once more to the charge. Thus assailed on two sides by overwhelming numbers, the situation was truly critical, but Colonel Davis, forming the two regiments into the shape of a re-entering angle, awaited the assault.

The Charge of Colonel Davis’ Regiment at Buena Vista

With flying banners and sounding trumpets the gailey caparisoned lancers came down at a thundering gallop until a sheet of flame from the angle wrapped their front ranks and bore it down to destruction. Quickly recovering, the survivors, with the fury of madmen, threw themselves again and again upon those stubborn ranks, which, now assailed on two sides, refused to give an inch, and met every onslaught with a withering fire, which soon so cumbered the ground with the dead that it was with difficulty the living could move over it.

At last utterly demoralized by the awful carnage, the Mexican lines broke and fled from the field. The day was over. Buena Vista was won, and Colonel Davis had accomplished a feat which, when Sir Colin Campbell imitated it at Inkerman two years later, he was sent by England to retrieve her fallen fortunes in India.

Notwithstanding the fact that Colonel Davis’ right foot had been shattered early in the morning, he had refused to leave the field for aid, but now at the close of the action he fell fainting from his horse. The wound was a dangerous one, and as the surgeons were of the opinion that more than a year must elapse before he could hope to walk, as soon as he was able to travel, General Taylor insisted on his going home, and thus closed his career in the Mexican War.

VII. Enters the Senate

This exploit at Buena Vista created the profoundest enthusiasm throughout the country, and the Legislatures of several states passed resolutions thanking him for his services. Governor Brown of his own state, in obedience to an overwhelming popular sentiment, a few weeks after his return, appointed Colonel Davis to fill a vacancy that had occurred in the Senate—an appointment which was speedily ratified by the Legislature.

When, in 1847, Mr. Davis took his seat in the Senate, that irrepressible conflict, inevitable from the hour that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 sanctioned slavery as an institution within the United States, had reached a crisis which was threatening the very existence of the Union. The Missouri Compromise prohibiting slavery north of 36° 30' had failed to sanction it in express terms south of that parallel, and while in 1820 probably no one would have denied that this was the logical and obvious meaning of that measure, such was not the case thirty years later. The Abolitionists had opposed the annexation of Texas, believing, as Mr. Adams declared, that such an event would justify the dissolution of the Union.

In finally accepting Texas with bad grace, they served notice that it was their last concession. Therefore when the application of the Missouri Compromise to the vast territory acquired from Mexico would have given over a large portion of it to slavery, they brought forward the Wilmot Proviso, a measure, the effect of which was to abrogate the Missouri Compromise in so far as it affected slavery south of that line, while leaving its prohibition as to the north side in full force.

Jefferson Davis as United States Senator in 1847

Mr. Davis participated in the discussion of these questions and at once became the ablest and most consistent of those statesmen who, contending for the strict construction of the Constitution and the broadest principles of state sovereignty, sought to prevent Congress from violating the one by infringing on the prerogatives of the other. Holding that the Constitution sanctioned slavery, that Congress had specified its limits, that the territories belonged in common to the states, he contended that the South could not accept with honor anything less than that the Missouri Compromise extended to the Pacific Ocean.

Reasoning from these premises, his speeches were masterpieces of logic, and whatever one may think of their philosophy, all must agree that they were among the greatest ever delivered in any deliberative body. Had the leaders of his party stood with him in that great battle, they would have been able to force some definite legislation which would have postponed the Civil War for many years—possibly beyond a period when the operation of economic laws might have effected the abolition of slavery as the only salvation of the South—but Henry Clay’s dread of a situation that endangered the Union prompted him to bring forward his last compromise measures, which he himself declared to be only a temporary expedient. Calhoun, equally strong in his love for the Union, anxious to preserve it at all costs, abandoned his former position, and against the warnings of Jefferson Davis, soon to become prophetic, his party accepted the measure which, as he declared, guaranteed no right that did not already exist, while abrogating to the South the benefits of the Compromise of 1820.