De Voto on the Battle of Palo Alto where Taylor's young artillery officers mowed down Mexican troops by the the score, perhaps unnecessarily:
"That the Mexican troops faced such fire and stayed on the field is ample evidence they were good troops. (but) Few of them, here or later, could shoot straight. Government policy, taking account of revolutions, had forbidden the citizenry to bear arms."
(Ahem, Mr. Obama.)
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As I've opined before, you have to love De Voto for a lot of reasons. Another one, referring to future CinC Taylor on the same battlefield near Matamoros in 1846:
"...he had no nerves and nothing recognizable as intelligence, he was afraid of nothing, and he was too unimaginative to know when he was being licked, which was fortunate since he did not know how to maneuver troops. Add to this a dislike of military forms and procedures and a taste for old clothes and you have a predestinate candidate for the Presidency."
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Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision 1846, Little-Brown 1942 pp. 189-190
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