ylor failed, as might have been expected,--the Chairman of
the Committee on Territories, Mr. Grow, of Pennsylvania, refusing even
to present their Constitution to the House,--and they prepared to return
to Utah.

A month or two later, Mr. Buchanan was inaugurated, and preparations for
the Utah Expedition were immediately ordered. In the first place, an
opinion was solicited from General Scott as to the feasibility of the
undertaking until the next year. That distinguished soldier gave a
decision adverse to the immediate dispatch of the expedition. He
considered that the arrangements necessary to be made were so extensive,
and the distances from which the regiments must be concentrated so
great, that the wiser plan was to consume the year in getting everything
in readiness for the troops to march from the frontier early in the
spring of 1858. It would have been well, had his advice prevailed;
but it was overruled, and the preparations for the expedition were
commenced. The troops detailed for the service were the Fifth Infantry,
then busy fighting Billy Bowlegs among the everglades of Florida,--the
Tenth Infantry, which was stationed at the forts in Upper
Minnesota,--the Second Dragoons, which was among the forces assembled
at Fort Leavenworth, to be used, if necessary, in Kansas, at the
requisition of Governor Walker,--and Phelps's light-artillery battery,
the same which so distinguished itself at Buena Vista, under the command
of Captain Washington. An ordnance-battery, also, was organized for the
purposes of the expedition. Brevet Brigadier-General Harney was assigned
to the command-in-chief, an officer of a rude force of character,
amounting often to brutality, and careless as to those details of
military duty which savor more of the accountant's inkstand than of
the drum and fife, but ambitious, active, and well acquainted with the
character of the service for which he was detailed. He was, at the time,
in command in Kansas, subject in a measure to the will of Governor
Walker.

The whole number of troops under orders for the expedition was hardly
twenty-five hundred, but from this total no estimate can be predicated
of the enormous quantities of commissary stores and munitions of war
necessary to be dispatched to sustain it. It was thought advisable
to send a supply for eighteen months, so that the trains exceeded in
magnitude those which would accompany an army of twenty thousand in
ordinary operations on the Eur