In a day or two I returned to Washington. I was ordered by Dr. A. S. Wotherspoon to quit all labor, and after he had bandaged my leg he kept me on my back three weeks. It did no good; no adhesion of the parts was made. I was vexed; so I took from my trunk a bottle of I know not what, obtained in New Orleans, only it smelled of turpentine, and injected it into the wound. I got up in the morning to go home, but lo and behold, the bandages were all saturated with blood and the wound inflamed. So, instead of going home, I was put on my back again. However that injection inflamed the sinus in my leg, and when bandaged again all the interior grew together, and in three weeks I was on my crutches, and my toes, or foot, touched the ground for the first time for about six months. So I was permanently cured by accident.
I had made application to the President for the appointment of assistant quartermaster some time in June. Now one day in July, when I was kept in bed by the doctor, a friend of mine, Mr. Nugent, came to my room to impart to me the information that I would not get the appointment because I could not "take the field," and that it would be given to Lieut. A. W. Reynolds, who was in Philadelphia on recruiting service. Nugent was connected with a newspaper, and was at times an assistant in the office of James Buchanan, Secretary of State, if I remember aright. On that day J. W. Forney, editor of _The Pennsylvanian_, a Democratic paper in Philadelphia, was in the office of Mr. Buchanan, and agreed to throw George M. Dallas, Vice President, overboard and support Mr. Buchanan for the presidency provided certain things were done by him for Mr. Forney. One of these items was that A. W. Reynolds should be appointed assistant quartermaster. I asked Nugent what special service Reynolds had rendered, as he had not been in Mexico at all, to entitle him to promotion. "Why he has always carried his _recruits_ to the polls to vote for Forney's Democratic friends." And thus it was; and on the 5th of August Reynolds was appointed "to take the field." Reynolds was a genial fellow, and "took the field" by remaining in Philadelphia until the spring of 1848, when he went to Matamoras to bring some mules to the States.