The occupation of Santa Fe was in fact decided upon as one of the very earliest war measures--primarily for the sake of the traders, but also with a view to the permanent retention of the province. The move was intended to be pacific, however. Polk doubtless expected that no serious opposition, if any at all, would be offered by the people; and there seem to have been hopes that Chihuahua and her sister states could be persuaded by arguments backed with force to let the caravan trade go on despite the war. In that case the burdensome duties imposed at Santa Fe would no longer have had to be paid, and the discrimination in favor of Mexican competitors, that had prevailed there, would have ceased. On May 13, therefore, the governor of Missouri was directed to raise eight companies of mounted troops and two of light artillery for an expedition to New Mexico, and Colonel S. W. Kearny of the First Dragoons was directed to command them.[14.4] [KEARNY'S MARCH] [Illustration: GENERAL KEARNY'S MARCH] So fine an opportunity for adventure appealed instantly to the bold, hardy and energetic young fellows of Missouri, and as early as June 6 volunteers were hurrying into the service at Fort Leavenworth--a square of wooden buildings, with a blockhouse at each corner and a plot of grass in the middle--which crowned a high bluff on the Missouri River about 312 miles from St. Louis; and about 1660 troops were soon assembled at that point. Of Kearny's dragoons there were some 300. The First Regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteers--which chose Alexander W. Doniphan as colonel--numbered about 860. The artillery, including nearly 250 men, consisted of "Battery A" of St. Louis under Captain Weightman and a company under Captain Fischer, a graduate of the Prussian artillery service, and formed a battalion commanded by Major M. L. Clark, a West Pointer.[14.3] There were also two small companies of volunteer infantry, a St. Louis mounted body of about one hundred called the Laclede Rangers, which Kearny attached to his regulars, about fifty Delaware and Shawnee Indians, and finally, though by no means last in importance, a Roman Catholic priest familiar with the Spanish language.[14.4] Without lingering to complete the outfit, Kearny sent the command off by sections. June 5 a detachment of the dragoons advanced. By the twenty-eighth all of Doniphan's regiment were on the march for Santa Fe and--none of them cared how much farther; and two days later Weightman's fine brass cannon, gleaming radiantly in the bright sunshine, wheeled into the trail. For several days the troops had to break their way through a rough country, but about fifteen miles south of the Kansas River they struck the Santa Fe road, a broad, well marked, natural highway running toward the southwest.[14.6]