by Ron Chernow
After the decisive Cerro Gordo victory, Scott’s army resumed its triumphant progress along the National Highway toward Mexico City, and Grant’s division secured the roadway. Scott was forced to halt for months because of expiring one-month enlistments. As he awaited reinforcements, Santa Anna had a chance to strengthen Mexico City’s defenses. The approach to the city presented fiendish difficulties because thin causeways on level ground made approaching troops easy targets for Mexican artillery. Encamped at Puebla, staying near the central plaza, Grant showed deepening insight into the fighting. He had a growing appetite for leadership and reaped a rich harvest of ideas for later use. After poring over maps and quizzing Mexican scouts, Grant grew convinced that Scott should swing his army around to the north of Mexico City. On the southern side, the army would flounder “through morass and ditches” whereas it would proceed to the north on solid, elevated ground.71 At first Grant hesitated to criticize his superiors, thinking such conduct “contrary to military ethics,” then he tried without success to relay his message up through the ranks.72 When Robert E. Lee stumbled upon a southern route, Scott heeded his advice instead.
By August, with dysentery rife at Puebla, Scott again elected to break loose from his supply lines and march on Mexico City, pioneering a new style of warfare. “We had to throw away the scabbard,” he explained, “and to advance naked blade in hand.”73 In striking at Contreras, San Jerónimo, and Churubusco, he shattered Mexico City’s outer defenses in bloody fighting. He sacrificed more than a thousand men, but Mexican casualties rose four times higher, robbing Santa Anna of a full one-third of his army. Lee was again singled out for bravery and bumped up to brevet lieutenant colonel. Even in retrospect, Grant could find no fault with the meticulous steps Scott had executed. He was also struck by the cheers lavished upon the general, and, writing home, tried on for size the feelings of the victorious commander. “I wondered what must be the emotions of General Scott, thus surrounded by the plaudits of his army. The ovation was genuine, and from the hearts of his men.”74
With Scott’s army poised to strike at Mexico City’s gates, President Polk had his emissary, Nicholas P. Trist, attempt on September 2 to negotiate a peace treaty by which Mexico would relinquish Texas to the Rio Grande and transfer New Mexico and California to the United States for a negotiated sum. The Mexicans rebuffed this insulting offer and a brief armistice ended two days later. On September 8, Scott launched an attack against Molino del Rey—the King’s Mill, in English—which was incorrectly thought to be deserted. An entire Mexican division opened up withering fire from the mill. After American artillery reciprocated, bombarding its stone walls with bullets and cannonballs, four American companies charged forward. Grant raced to the mill only to discover his ex-roommate, Fred Dent, lying wounded and spouting blood from his thigh. Grant “refreshed him from his canteen and dragged him to a place of safety close under the wall,” Julia wrote.75
For a young man, Grant was remarkably clearheaded and self-possessed in combat. “At the Battle of Molino del Rey,” said Longstreet, “I had occasion to notice [Grant’s] superb courage and coolness under fire.”76 Grant discerned that several armed Mexicans still stood atop the building. After backing up a cart to the wall, he sprang onto the roof only to find that an American had single-handedly captured the Mexicans. “They still had their arms, while the soldier before mentioned was walking as sentry, guarding the prisoners he had surrounded, all by himself.”77 Quite typically, Grant incorporated this mock-heroic tale into his Memoirs even though it cast him in a slightly comic-opera light.
At Molino del Rey, Grant exhibited bravery and compassion, tending so many wounded Americans on the battlefield that one fellow soldier portrayed him as “a ministering angel” with “a kind heart.”78 The night after the battle, he came upon young Virginia lieutenant George Pickett shivering in the cold. When Grant asked why he trembled, Pickett replied, “I shall fr-fr-freeze to d-death.” “Oh no you won’t,” said Grant, who found a piece of roasted red chili pepper, blew away the ashes, then handed it to the West Point graduate. “Here, Pickett, you eat that and it will be as good as a stove inside of you.”79 When Winfield Scott was asked in future years whether he remembered Grant from Mexico, he noted that he “attained special distinction at Molino del Rey”—a distinction that earned Grant the honorary grade of brevet first lieutenant.80 Grant learned the importance of following up promptly on victory and chided Scott for not pursuing the fleeing enemy once the mill was taken. Though an American victory, Molino del Rey carried a fearful price tag of almost eight hundred American casualties.
On the morning of September 12, American heavy artillery battered the fortress at Chapultepec, once a royal residence, now a military school. When it fell the next morning, Grant and his men sprang forward under an aqueduct toward the gate of San Cosme, sprinting from arch to arch to evade Mexican bullets. With about a dozen volunteers, joined with soldiers from another company, Grant cleared Mexican snipers from parapets and rooftops, enabling the American column to pass. Then he spotted a church steeple a hundred feet high that might allow an unobstructed shot at the back of San Cosme gate. In narrating this maneuver in his Memoirs, Grant gave an amusing description of the scene at the church: “When I knocked for admission a priest came to the door, who, while extremely polite, declined to admit us. With the little Spanish then at my command, I explained to him that he might save property by opening the door . . . and besides, I intended to go in whether he consented or not. He began to see his duty in the same light that I did, and opened the door, though he did not look as if it gave him special pleasure to do so.” Grant and his men hoisted a dismantled howitzer into the belfry, assembled it, then trained it on Mexicans behind the gate, creating “great confusion.”81
Elated, General Worth sent Lieutenant John Pemberton (who would someday surrender Vicksburg) to summon Grant. The appreciative general told Grant he wished to deliver a second howitzer to the belfry. Grant’s reaction showed his canny nature. “I could not tell the General that there was not room enough in the steeple for another gun, because he probably would have looked upon such a statement as a contradiction from a second lieutenant. I took the captain with me, but did not use his gun.”82 Thanks to Grant’s shrewdly commandeering the church, Worth’s men overran the San Cosme gate, leaving Mexico City defenseless before them. Toward the end of this eventful day, Grant learned that a close friend, Lieutenant Calvin Benjamin, had received a mortal wound. He found him lying on a cot in the street and wiped away dirt that begrimed the dying man’s face—a poignant moment that revealed strong emotion beneath Grant’s impassive facade. For his assault on the San Cosme gate, Grant attained the honorary rank of brevet captain for “gallant and meritorious conduct in the battle of Chapultepec.”83 This temporary promotion would allow him to wear the bars and perform the duties of a captain. Irvin McDowell, later a Union general, termed Grant in Mexico “the best horseman and the bravest fellow in the army.”84 Promoted to brevet colonel, Robert E. Lee received a rare accolade from Winfield Scott, who extolled him as “the very best soldier that I ever saw in the field.”85
Bedecked in military finery, Winfield Scott strode into the National Palace of Mexico City on September 14—the storied Halls of Montezuma. Veteran military observers agreed with the Duke of Wellington that Scott now stood forth as “the greatest living soldier.”86 Local residents deserted the streets, lending them an eerie silence. As a parting shot, Santa Anna emptied the prisons of inmates, and one of them, posted atop a roof, shot Grant’s friend Lieutenant Sidney Smith of the Fourth Infantry. Grant never forgot the ghoulish sequel. Smith “retained his natural color, his respiration, pulse and temperature were almost normal, he was cheerful and he had no idea of dying. He even laughed and joked about it and said that after he got well he should never be careless again. Suddenly his complexion changed to that of a corpse and in a few hours he was dead.”87 Based on seniority, Grant was promoted to first lieutenant by
this sudden death. Had it not been for this fatality, Grant realized, he would have remained a second lieutenant “after having been in all the engagements possible for any one man and in a regiment that lost more officers during the war than it ever had present at any one engagement,” he wrote with a distinct trace of bitterness.88
Grant was thrilled by Scott’s panache and military acumen, especially since he believed President Polk, by holding back troops, had tried to undercut a feared political adversary. “Since my last letter to you,” he told Julia, “four of the hardest fought battles that the world ever witnessed have taken place, and the most astonishing victories have crowned the American arms. But dearly have they paid for it! The loss of officers and men killed and wounded is frightful.”89 Baked by the tropical sun, worn out by years of war, Grant had a red beard that hung four inches long and he thought he had aged ten years in appearance. Yet despite the heavy toll from combat and disease—13,283 Americans had died, nearly a fifth of all soldiers who fought—Grant was still in some ways a callow young man, seeing an exotic new country for the first time and gushing to Julia that “Mexico [City] is one of the most beautiful cities in the world . . . No country was ever so blessed by nature.”90
The Mexican government having fled, American troops lingered as an occupation army while politicians hammered out a peace agreement. Winfield Scott, after fiercely prosecuting the war, proved generous in victory. At first Grant witnessed brutal reprisals by Mexicans against their peers who had cooperated with the Americans, including women who had their heads shaved for fraternizing with United States officers. But in time Grant saw how a wise, charitable policy toward a conquered civilian population restored peaceful conditions with impressive speed. “Lawlessness was soon suppressed,” Grant wrote, “and the City of Mexico settled down into a quiet, law-abiding place.”91 Other accounts of the American occupation depicted atrocities raging on both sides.
The Fourth Infantry camped in the small village of Tacubaya, four miles outside of Mexico City. Although Grant still had quartermaster duties and dealt with a clothing shortage in his regiment, he had free time to ride to the city daily and play cards with future president Franklin Pierce. Besieged by beggars, Grant deplored the gross inequality of Mexican society and instinctively sided with the oppressed. “With a soil and climate scarcely equaled in the world,” he protested, Mexico “has more poor and starving subjects who are willing and able to work than any country in the world. The rich keep down the poor with a hardness of heart that is incredible.”92 Whatever his criticisms of their society, Grant never regarded the Mexicans as racial inferiors.
Because bullfighting was the national sport, Grant attended one fight purely for the experience and was sickened by it. “I could not see how human beings could enjoy the sufferings of beasts, and often of men, as they seemed to do on these occasions.”93 In his Memoirs, he included a vivid description of a bullfight that gains its power from Grant’s patent identification with the dying bull after it is pierced with spears. “The flag drops and covers the eyes of the animal so that he is at a loss what to do; it is jerked from him and the torment is renewed. When the animal is worked into an uncontrollable frenzy, the horsemen withdraw, and the matadores—literally murderers—enter, armed with knives having blades twelve or eighteen inches long, and sharp.”94
For Grant, the most fascinating moment in Mexico came when he joined with Simon Bolivar Buckner and other officers in a hair-raising ascent of the enormous volcanic mountain of Popocatépetl. Their mules negotiated trails that skirted yawning chasms, flanked by sheer vertical walls of rock. The next day, buffeted by heavy snow and wind, they were forced to turn back a thousand feet below the crater. Nine officers suffered severe snow blindness and had to be led back down the mountain on horseback. After returning, the group visited the Valley of Cuernavaca and explored a mammoth cave festooned with singular rock formations that hypnotized Grant. “We had with us torches and rockets and the effect of them in that place of total darkness was beautiful.”95
It is consistent with Grant’s later drinking patterns that he abstained from alcohol during combat periods, when he was actively engaged and shouldered responsibility. “I never saw Grant under the influence of liquor at all,” said one soldier. “I know he did drink a little, but that was pretty good whisky he had.”96 Another person noted he “never drank to excess nor indulged in the other profligacy so common in that country of loose morals.”97 But idleness, boredom, and the loneliness of occupation mixed a toxic brew of emotions that slowly led him into temptation and people noticed an abrupt change. One Ohio soldier wrote home in May 1848 that Grant was “altered very much: he is a short thick man with a beard reaching half way down his waist and I fear he drinks too much but don’t you say a word on that subject.”98 A more damning recollection came from his friend Richard Dawson, who said Grant “got to drinking heavily during or after the war.” Right after his return from Mexico, he encountered Grant and said he “was in bad shape from the effects of drinking, and suffering from mania a potu [delirium tremens] and some other troubles of the campaign.”99
Despite such lapses, Grant had compiled an extremely commendable record during the Mexican War, which had turned him into a seasoned officer, steeped in battlefield wisdom and logistical finesse. And then there were useful contacts with dozens of soldiers later elevated to general in the Civil War. Even though Robert E. Lee had rendered meritorious service, Grant had studied him close-up and knew he was not endowed with supernatural abilities: “I had known him personally, and knew that he was mortal; and it was just as well that I felt this.”100
The war culminated with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a huge bonanza for the United States. It expanded American territory by nearly a quarter, forcing Mexico to shed half its territory. The United States gained Texas with the crucial Rio Grande boundary as well as New Mexico and California—territories encompassing the current states of California, Nevada, and Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico, and part of Colorado. In exchange, the United States relinquished claims to Baja California, assumed $3.5 million in Mexican debts owed to American citizens, and handed over $15 million.
As the war’s rabid opponents—Senator Charles Sumner, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson among them—had predicted, the victory carved out a vast territory up for grabs between slave owners and abolitionists, possibly tipping the tenuous balance between North and South. In August 1846, Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania had introduced a measure to outlaw slavery in territory acquired from Mexico, putting slavery front and center in American politics. As one congressman stated, “It would really seem there is no other subject claiming the deliberations of this House but negro slavery.”101 While southern legislators quashed the Wilmot Proviso, it stimulated debate that showed just how extraordinarily divisive slavery had grown. Grant insisted the Civil War was “largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.”102 As a Whig opponent of slavery, Abraham Lincoln supported the Wilmot Proviso and denounced President Polk’s war in thunderous terms: “He is deeply conscious of being in the wrong . . . he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.”103
CHAPTER FOUR
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The Son of Temperance
RIGHT BEFORE HE LEFT MEXICO, in June 1848, Grant suffered a small mishap that would plague him for several years. As quartermaster, he was responsible for the care of regimental funds, which he kept tightly guarded in a trunk. After his own chest was broken into, he took the seemingly prudent step of depositing the $1,000 in his care in the locked trunk of Captain John H. Gore. When that trunk was purloined from Gore’s tent, Grant faced a board of inquiry, which exonerated him of any wrongdoing. It would be some time, however, before he straightened out the situation with authorities in Washington, and, until that happened, he was legally responsible for replacing the lost thousand dollars—an anxiou
s situation for him.
On July 16, after having been camped for one week on a sandy beach under a tropical sun, Grant and his regiment were relieved to quit Veracruz and the yellow fever rampant there. They sailed on transport ships to East Pascagoula, Mississippi, where they were supposed to spend the summer at Camp Jefferson Davis. By this point, Grant, twenty-six, had been engaged to Julia Dent for four years, but had seen her only once three years earlier, a separation that tormented him. In May, having received no mail from Julia for two months, he lashed out in a missive: “I believe you are carrying on a flirtation with someone, as you threaten of doing.”1 Either then or later, the line was blotted out, but it testifies to the grave toll the years apart had taken.
Obtaining a leave of absence, Grant made a beeline for St. Louis, where the Dents spent the summer in the city. Everyone saw, at a glance, that Grant had matured and appeared more worldly and cosmopolitan. Although he had shaved off his beard, restoring his clean-shaven image, he had shed his boyish softness. “When he came back from Mexico he had put on perhaps 20 pounds of muscle, tanned, ready for the battles of life,” said Julia.2 Emma Dent, now twelve, found Grant more reserved, but applauded the changes wrought in her rugged, sinewy hero. “His face was more bronzed from the exposure to the sun, and he wore his captain’s double-barred shoulder straps with a little more dignity than he had worn the old ones, perhaps.”3 The last known photograph of Grant before the Civil War, taken a year later, shows a handsome, dashing young man with something sad and downcast in his expression. His eyes seem crossed, as if turned inward in sorrowful contemplation.