That was Grant's style as well. It might have been his style had he never seen Taylor, but from Taylor he learned it was a style that invoked trust, respect, and confidence in troops and officers.

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Taylor also offered some practical, useful lessons of war. Lee, in his short service with Taylor, learned at least one such lesson that would influence his Civil War service. Lee was at Taylor's quarters one day when an excited young officer rode up and announced he had seen 20,000 Mexican troops moving up with 250 guns.

Taylor, familiar with the resources available to his opponent, was naturally skeptical. Captain, he asked, do you say that you saw that force?

Yes, General, the captain said.

Captain, Taylor said, if you say you saw it, of course I must believe you; but I would not have believed it if I had seen it myself.

Sixteen years later, on the field at Chancellorsville, Virginia, Lee was to greet wild reports of the Federal strength and movements by recounting Taylor's skepticism. The incident had left a deep impression.

But it was Scott, the thinking man's general, who emerges as the true mentor of the great Civil War commanders. Scott was perhaps the finest military mind of his century, and one of the best of any century. In personality he was the polar opposite of Taylor: conceited in his way, devoted to pomp and circumstance, quick to take offense, jealous of his prerogatives, often undiplomatic. He came to be known as Old Fuss and Feathers. But he, too, was courageous in the face of enemy fire, and he added to that trait a precise and original military intellect.

Lee was 20 months in Mexico, most of it with Scott. In those months, he learned lessons he would apply with striking effect in the Civil War a decade and a half later. One of his biographers, Douglas Southall Freeman, listed several military traits Lee learned under the brilliant Scott. Others learned the same lessons, but few would apply them with such success.

The first of these traits was audacity. Everything in Mexico called for audacity. The disproportionate size of the two armies, the professionalism of the American officers as opposed to the Mexican, the highly trained nature of Scott's army, all favored audacity, and Scott's campaign reflected it at every turn. Lee later carried that quality into battle after battle in the Civil War, and Jackson displayed it in abundance in his classic Shenandoah Valley campaign and at Second Manassas and Chancellorsville under Lee. On the Union side, Grant never lacked it.

Another lesson Scott taught was the need to delegate responsibility. He believed a commanding general's job was to plan an operation, acquaint his commanders with the plan, see that his troops were brought to the seat of action at the right time and the right place — and then leave the fighting of the battle in detail to his subordinates. A number of Civil War commanders borrowed that style from Scott, but Lee emulated him most closely.

Scott also knew the importance of a trained staff. He leaned heavily on his talented West Pointers; he knew winning was impossible without them. In the Civil War, Lee, Grant, and Jackson all put a high priority on building and maintaining smart, efficient, well-trained staffs.

Reconnaissance was a Scott byword. He relied on it at every turn along the National Road to Mexico City, and Lee had been his reconnaissance star. It was this all-important reconnaissance that made possible Scott's victories at Cerro Gordo and Contreras, and the importance of reconnaissance became firmly embedded in the minds of Scott's most successful pupils.

Cerro Gordo, one of the great flanking movements in all of military history, was in itself a critical lesson of the Mexican War. The flank attack was a staple of Napoleonic tactics; every West Point cadet would have been familiar with it in theory, but Cerro Gordo vividly demonstrated the impact of an attack where an attack was least expected. It would become the tactic virtually every Civil War general yearned most to emulate and recreate in his own campaigns. Lee fashioned Cerro Gordos with stunning success at Second Manassas and Chancellorsville. In both cases his instrument was Stonewall Jackson, a man who also thought in terms of Cerro Gordos and whom an admiring Union officer would one day call the supremest flanker and rearer the world had ever seen. Grant, too, knew the value of the flanking movement. He repeatedly tried to get around Lee's right flank in the battles from the Wilderness to Petersburg in 1864, failing only because Lee always anticipated him.

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