The class of '46 was ordered forthwith to the seat of war in Mexico. Jackson's first engagement was the siege of Vera Cruz; his next the battle of Cherubusco. The official report of this last mentions him favorably. As second lieutenant, he was called upon early in the action to take the place of the next in rank above him, the first lieutenant having fallen in the charge. After the battle Jackson was further promoted to the rank of brevet captain. His "devotion, industry, talent, and gallantry" were noted officially after Chapultepec, not only by his colonel, but by Generals Pillow and Worth, and by the Commander-in-chief, Winfield Scott. What he afterward confessed as the "one wilful lie he ever told" is thus reported by a brother-officer: "Lieutenant Jackson's section of Magruder's battery was subjected to a plunging fire from the Castle of Chapultepec. Horses were killed or disabled, and the men deserted the guns and sought shelter behind wall or embankment. Lieutenant Jackson remained at the guns, walking back and forth and kept saying, 'See, there is no danger; _I_ am not hit!' While standing with his legs wide apart, a cannon-ball passed between them.... No other officer in the army in Mexico was promoted so often for meritorious conduct, or made so great a stride in rank." After peace was declared in 1848, he was stationed for two years at Fort Hamilton, and six months at Fort Meade in Florida; in 1851 he was elected Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Artillery Tactics in the Virginia Military Institute, situated in Lexington, Va. In the decade succeeding this event, he was to the casual eye the least striking figure in the group of professors who taught the art of war in the beautiful mountain-girt "West Point of the South." "I should have said that he was the least likely of our family to make a noise in the world," said his sister-in-law in 1862, when the popular voice was ranking him with Bayard, Roland, Sidney, and Napoleon. "I knew that what I willed to do, I could do," he had said of his recovery from physical weaknesses which made his acceptance of the Lexington professorship of doubtful expediency, in the judgment of friends.