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 European continent, where _dépôts_ could be established along the line of march. To appreciate such preparations, it is necessary to understand the character of the country to be traversed between the Missouri River and the Great Salt Lake.