lack of promotion opportunities. He later was court-martialed during the Civil War for different reasons. Later career On August 6 1851, Price bought the remainder of Revere's property for $8,000. The same year, Revere formed a coastal trading business with Sandy McGregor, for which they purchased La Golondrina, a ship built in Spain that could hold a crew of 25. Revere and McGregor presumably headed the crew. Revere joined the Mexican Army with the rank of colonel. He was ordered to reorganize the Mexican Artillery Corps and was honored by the Spanish and Mexican Governments. In 1851, La Golondrina encountered a beached Spanish ship off the coast of Mexico, which was under siege by Native Mexicans. Revere and McGregor fought and possibly murdered the Mexican attackers allowing the Spanish "crew of seventeen men and one woman" to escape. For this deed, Queen Isabella II knighted Revere in the Order of Isabella the Catholic in 1851. Soon afterward, Revere and McGregor dissolved their partnership and sold the vessel "to a group of Englishmen hoping to find gold in Australia." He visited Mexico City to meet with Mariano Arista, the president of Second Federal Republic of Mexico from 1851 to 1853. Arista offered Revere "a commission as Lieutenant Colonel of Artillery in the Mexican Army." Revere accepted and reorganized the artillery and trained officers. However, after multiple revolts, Arista resigned and was exiled from the country, prompting Revere to quit the position and move to Morristown, New Jersey. First retirement In 1852, Revere retired to Morristown, New Jersey; he purchased the Ogden farmhouse and the 88 acres of farmland surrounding it. Once the land was his, he contracted local master carpenter Ashbel Bruen of Chatham to construct a unique mansion on the hill, which Revere helped design. His customized mansion, titled The Willows, was designed in the Gothic Revival style (specifically, Carpenter Gothic). Revere and Bruen likely based their design on the 1849 Olmstead House, designed by British architect Gervase Wheeler, the pattern of which appeared in the book Rural Homes of 1851. Construction was complete in 1854, when Revere moved in. In the dining room, Revere likely painted the elaborate trompe-l'œil murals of still lives, the Revere family crest, and a bouquet of baguettes. Above his family crest, he painted Thomas Ken's 1674 doxology, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow," often sung to the tune of the Old 100th. The