in Mexico were by no means representative of those of the men who laid down their arms at the Battle of Mier. While the conditions of his captivity left much to be desired, they were substantially better than those endured by the men under his command. As officers, Green and Fisher generally fared better than the rank and file, and during the course of their long march into Mexico, they were usually housed in posadas, rather than the muddy cowpens to which the others quickly became accustomed. Moreover, their circumstances were ameliorated by their access to financial resources unavailable to most prisoners. The U.S. consul in Matamoros advanced Green a total of $700, while his counterpart in Veracruz also loaned him money for his passage back to Texas. He received additional funds from friends in the United States, which he used to purchase food and liquor and to effect his release from Perote. By contrast, those prisoners unable to rely upon the largesse of friends and family at home subsisted largely on the meager rations provided by the Mexican army, unable to pay for the various amenities that made prison life more comfortable. Wrote one Perote prisoner: "I have not got a single shirt to my back nor scarcely anything in the shape of pantaloons. Nor have I any prospect of getting things. Those who received money from friends in the States can get along verry[sic] well but those that have none suffer."42

In addition to receiving better treatment, Green was fortunate to have been spared some of the more grueling experiences of the main body of prisoners during the course of its march into Mexico. Separated from the rank and file at Matamoros, Green saw his men again only once, at the Hacienda del Salado on the eve of the Texans' bid for freedom. By the time they arrived at Perote in the fall of 1843, Green had already made his escape from the fortress and returned to Texas. Thus, his account of the most celebrated events of the expedition - the battle at the Hacienda del Salado, the Texans' escape into the mountains, and the "black bean episode" - was culled from other sources. For this part of his narrative, Green was fortunate to meet in Texas in 1843 another Mier prisoner who had managed to escape from a Mexican prison, Samuel H. Walker. Although Walker, a man of few words, lacked Green's talents as an author and raconteur, he had kept a diary of his experiences in Mexico, describing in a straightforward manner the hardships of the main body of prisoners. Walker gave the diary to Green, providing him with much of the material he needed to chronicle the all-important events that followed his departure from the Hacienda del Salado.43

Characteristically, Green failed to mention Walker's contribution to the book, underscoring another problem of his Journal: his overbearing ego and his tendency to ignore or denigrate the role of others. As an eyewitness account of a military campaign, the book ranks in terms of its excessive use of the first person alongside Theodore Roosevelt's chronicle of the Spanish-American War