The Man Who Saved the Union

by H. W. Brands

  The American artillery opened fire on the Mexican positions. “It was war pyrotechnics of the most serious and brilliant character,” Grant wrote at the time. The artillery barrage covered the advance of American infantry. “I stood there watching the brigade slowly climbing those ragged heights, each minute nearer and nearer the works of the enemy with our missiles flying over their heads, while white puffs of smoke spitefully flashed out in rapid succession along the enemy’s line, and I knew that every discharge sent death into our ranks.” Grant wished more than ever to be at the front. “While it was a most inspiring sight, it was a painful one to me.… As our men finally swept over and into the works, my heart was sad at the fate that held me from sharing in that brave and brilliant assault.”

  But he shared the joy of the victory. “As soon as the Mexicans saw this height taken, they knew the day was up with them,” he wrote an Ohio friend. “Santa Anna vamoosed with a small part of his force leaving about 6000 to be taken prisoner with all their arms, supplies &c. Santa Anna’s loss could not have been less than 8000 killed, wounded, taken prisoners and missing. The pursuit was so close upon the retreating few that Santa Anna’s carriage and mules were taken and with them his wooden leg and some 20 or 30 thousand dollars in money.”

  These first estimates were too high; Santa Anna’s losses were about half what Grant reported. But the meaning of the American victory was plain. “Between the thrashing the Mexicans have got at Buena Vista, Vera Cruz, and Cerro Gordo,” he wrote his Ohio friend, “they are so completely broken up that if we only had transportation we could go to the City of Mexico and where ever else we liked without resistance.”

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  IN FACT TRANSPORTATION WAS NOT ALL THAT WAS REQUIRED. MUCH of Scott’s army consisted of volunteers, many of whom had enlisted for terms about to expire. Scott couldn’t compel them to remain beyond their terms, and few showed much inclination to do so. Rather than start for Mexico City and lose half his army at the gates of the capital, he discharged the current crop of enlistees early, in order that they clear Vera Cruz and the coastal lowlands before the fever season began, and awaited the arrival of their replacements.

  The delay gave Grant time to miss Julia more than ever. The army occupied Puebla, which brought her home to mind. “It surpasses St. Louis by far both in appearance and size,” he wrote her of Puebla. “It contains from 80 to 90 thousand inhabitants. The houses are large and well built.” The people were all Catholic. “At a certain ring of the church bell or when the senior Priest of the place passes, you might see them on their knees in the streets all over the city.” The climate was nearly perfect. “This place from its elevation is very healthy and much more pleasant both in summer and winter, so far as climate is concerned, than Jefferson Barracks.”

  But St. Louis had Julia and Puebla did not. “The night after I received your last letter I dreamed that I had been ordered on the recruiting service and was near where you were,” he wrote. “In my dream, I said now I have often dreamed of being near my dear Julia but this time it is no dream for here are houses I recollect well, and it is only two days travel to St. Louis. But when I woke up on the morning and found that it was but a dream after all, how disappointed I was!”

  He began to wish he had never gone to war. “How much, my Dearest Julia, I regret that I had not taken my Father’s advice and resigned long ago. Now, no doubt, I would have been comfortably in business and been always near one of whom I am always thinking and whom I love better than all the world besides.” He might yet resign. “In the course of a few months more I will see you again if it costs me my commission, which by the way I value very low, for I have been a very long time balancing in my mind whether I should resign or not.”

  He didn’t resign but marched to Mexico City instead. Santa Anna unexpectedly declined to challenge the Americans on their route from Puebla, and after three days Scott’s advance guard crested the pass that opened upon the Valley of Mexico. Several volcanoes ringed the valley, the highest being Popocatepetl, which commanded the southern horizon. Three large lakes and some smaller ones occupied the valley floor; beyond the lakes lay Mexico City. The main road to the capital ran between two of the large lakes, which served as partial moats. Santa Anna filled the gap between the lakes with trenches and troops.

  Scott accordingly left the main road and skirted to the south. Santa Anna detected the maneuver and repositioned his defenders. Scott skirted further, after additional reconnaissance by Robert E. Lee. On August 20 the Americans engaged the Mexicans at the neighboring villages of Contreras and Churubusco and inflicted demoralizing defeats on the defenders, although at considerable cost.

  The American victories carried Scott’s force to the very gates of the capital, but he declined to enter the city. He wanted his troops to catch their breath; equally he wanted Santa Anna to catch his breath. Scott feared that if Santa Anna was totally discredited, there would be no one in Mexico able to make peace. When Santa Anna suggested a truce, Scott accepted, hoping negotiations would follow.

  They did but didn’t lead anywhere, and in early September Scott declared the truce ended. As he prepared to renew the attack he received reports that Santa Anna was melting down the church bells of Mexico City to make new guns at a cluster of mills at Molina del Rey. American intelligence indicated that the mills were lightly defended; Scott, without giving the matter much thought, ordered the site taken.

  Grant was among those assigned to the task, and he soon discovered that the intelligence was badly mistaken. Santa Anna had slipped several thousand troops into the mills and vicinity, and when the Americans charged, the Mexicans raked them with musket and artillery fire. The Americans reached the walls of the mill complex but not before losing scores of officers and men.

  Grant got to the walls unscathed with the first of the American troops. “I happened to notice that there were armed Mexicans still on top of the building, only a few feet from many of our men,” he recorded later. “Not seeing any stairway or ladder reaching to the top of the building, I took a few soldiers and had a cart that happened to be standing near brought up, and, placing the shafts against the wall and chocking the wheels so that the cart could not back, used the shafts as a sort of ladder extending to within three or four feet of the top. By this I climbed to the roof of the building, followed by a few men.” To his surprise he learned that an American private had preceded him to the rooftop, and to his greater surprise he saw that the single soldier had somehow captured a Mexican major and several other officers, all still armed. Grant pitched in, taking the swords from the officers and ordering his own men to disable the muskets the Mexicans carried.

  The Mexican forces withdrew from Molina del Rey to the fortress of Chapultepec, half a mile away. In retrospect Grant observed that an opportunity was lost by not pursuing the Mexicans at once. “No doubt Americans and Mexicans would have gone over the defenses of Chapultepec so near together that the place would have fallen into our hands without further loss,” he wrote. But Scott called a halt, believing that his army had sustained sufficient casualties for one battle.

  When the assault on Chapultepec did come, five days later, it cost the Americans heavily. An artillery barrage drove the defenders back from the walls long enough for the Americans to approach. With scaling ladders they climbed the walls and engaged the Mexicans in fierce hand-to-hand fighting. The first Americans to the top suffered grievously but provided an opening for those who followed. Within minutes they were inside the castle, where the carnage continued. Several hundred of the Mexicans were cadets, and though many were brave they were no match for the battle-tested Americans. Six of the cadets refused to surrender; five stood their ground and fought to the death, leaving the sixth to wrap himself in the Mexican flag and leap off the parapet in patriotic suicide.

  Chapultepec guarded the western gates of Mexico City; Grant’s part in the battle was to assault one of those gates, the San Cosme. He reconnoitered ahead of his division, discovered a way to out
flank the gun defending the road to the gate, and led a company that captured the gun. Scouting forward again, he spied a church with a belfry that overlooked the San Cosme gate. He brought up a small howitzer and ordered some men to help him transport it, and they made their way across a field and through several chest-deep irrigation ditches to the entrance to the church. “When I knocked for admission a priest came to the door, who, while extremely polite, declined to admit us,” he recalled. “With the little Spanish then at my command, I explained to him that he might save the property by opening the door, and he certainly would save himself from becoming a prisoner, for a time at least; and besides, I intended to go in whether he consented or not.” The priest let them pass. They carried the howitzer up the stairs to the belfry, set up the gun and began dropping shells on San Cosme and the city behind it.

  Grant’s gun and the confusion it wreaked among the Mexicans attracted the attention of William Worth, Grant’s division commander. Worth sent one of his staff, John Pemberton, to see who was responsible. Pemberton brought Grant to Worth, who complimented him on his initiative and ordered a second howitzer sent to the same belfry. Grant was too respectfully timid to explain that the belfry was only large enough for one gun. The second howitzer was sent but not used.

  Grant’s regimental commander subsequently praised him for performing “most nobly” in the attack on San Cosme, which left the American force poised to enter the city. Santa Anna once again judged that discretion trumped continued resistance, and he evacuated the capital. On the morning of September 14 Grant joined the other Americans in marching victoriously into Mexico City.

  “Mexico is one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” he wrote Julia. “And being the capital, no wonder that the Mexicans should have fought desperately to save it.” Yet they hadn’t fought well. “They have fought with every advantage on their side. They doubled us in numbers, doubled us and more in artillery. They behind strong breastworks had every advantage, and then they were fighting for their homes.” But still they had lost.

  The American performance didn’t escape Grant’s critical assessment. The battles of Molina del Rey and Chapultepec had cost the Americans dearly—and for no compelling reason, he concluded. During the delay at Puebla he had pondered the best approach to Mexico City. “From my map and all the information I acquired while the army was at Puebla,” he wrote on the eve of Chapultepec, “I was then, and am now more than ever, convinced that the army could have approached the city by passing around north of it, and reached the northwest side”—near San Cosme—“and avoided all the fortified positions, until we reached the gates of the city at their weakest and most indefensible, as well as most approachable, points.… It seems to me that the northwest side of the city could have been approached without attacking a single fort or redoubt.”

  Grant had communicated his view to his immediate superiors, but he never learned whether they passed it up the chain of command. At the time he acceded to the wisdom of authority. “I am willing to believe,” he wrote a friend, “that the opinion of a lieutenant, where it differs from that of his commanding General, must be founded on ignorance of the situation.”

  Additional experience, however, confirmed his opinion of Scott’s misjudgment. “The battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec have seemed to me to have been wholly unnecessary,” he wrote many years later. Even allowing for a southern approach to the capital, Scott could have skirted Molina and Chapultepec, leaving the garrisons there to evacuate or be surrounded.

  But experience taught Grant something else as well—“that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred.” Scott’s success was the irrefutable riposte to criticism. “He invaded a populous country, penetrating two hundred and sixty miles into the interior, with a force at no time equal to one-half of that opposed to him; he was without a base; the enemy was always intrenched, always on the defensive; yet he won every battle, he captured the capital, and conquered the government. Credit is due to the troops engaged, it is true, but the plans and the strategy were the general’s.”

  Grant reflected on the two commanders, Scott and Taylor, he fought under in Mexico. “The contrast between the two was very marked,” he wrote. Scott, besides dressing in full uniform on every occasion, insisted on the stiffest protocol. “When he inspected his lines, word would be sent to all division and brigade commanders in advance, notifying them of the hour when the commanding general might be expected. This was done so that all the army might be under arms to salute their chief as he passed.… His staff proper, besides all officers constructively on his staff—engineers, inspectors, quartermasters, etc., that could be spared—followed, also in uniform and in prescribed order.” Scott’s full staff was essential to his style of command. “Scott saw more through the eyes of his staff officers than through his own.” And he treated communication as a self-conscious art form. “General Scott was quite precise in language, cultivated a style peculiarly his own; was proud of his rhetoric; not averse to speaking of himself, often in the third person.” His precision extended to the orders he issued. “Orders were prepared with great care and evidently with the view that they should be a history of what followed.”

  Taylor, on the other hand, was the soul of simplicity. Besides almost never wearing his general’s uniform, he eschewed a large staff. “He moved about the field in which he was operating, to see through his own eyes the situation. Often he would be without staff officers, and when he was accompanied by them there was no prescribed order in which they followed. He was very much given to sit his horse sideways—with both feet on one side—particularly on the battlefield.” He devoted little thought to his mode of expression but much to its substance. “Taylor was not a conversationalist, but on paper he could put his meaning so plainly that there could be no mistaking it. He knew how to express what he wanted to say in the fewest well-chosen words, but would not sacrifice meaning to the construction of high-sounding sentences.” He didn’t pretend to anticipate every contingency and “gave orders to meet the emergency without reference to how they would read in history.”

  Grant saw the strengths in each general, though he had a preference. “Both were great and successful soldiers; both were true, patriotic and upright in all their dealings. Both were pleasant to serve under; Taylor was pleasant to serve with.”

  The occupation of Mexico City began promisingly. “Everything looks as if peace should be established soon,” Grant wrote Julia. “The whole Mexican army is destroyed or dispersed; they have lost nearly all their artillery and other munitions of war; we are occupying the rich and populous valley from which the great part of their revenues are collected; and all their sea ports are cut off from them.”

  The fighting over, he couldn’t leave Mexico soon enough. “The idea of staying longer in this country is to me insupportable. Just think of the three long years that have passed since we met. My health has always been good, but exposure to weather and a tropical sun have added ten years to my apparent age. At this rate I will soon be old.” Many of his companions had died. “Out of all the officers that left Jefferson Barracks with the 4th Infantry, but three besides myself now remain.”

  Yet nothing about the war moved quickly. Scott was right to worry that the discrediting of Santa Anna would complicate peacemaking, for upon the Mexican general’s defeat at the gates of Mexico City he turned the presidency over to a caretaker government that proved unequal to the task of signing away half the country. For months the Mexicans dithered and dodged, hoping some stroke of fortune would spare them the increasingly inevitable.

  James Polk seemed intent on abetting the delay. The president wished to capture for the Democrats the fruits of victories won by Whig generals, and he feared that Nicholas Trist, the envoy he had sent to Mexico City to negotiate a treaty, was falling under the influence of soldiers who, like Grant, wanted nothing more than to get home. Polk summarily ordered Trist back to Washington. But Scott talked Trist into ignoring the order and continui
ng the negotiations.

  The political pressure on Trist persuaded the Mexican government to get more serious, and within a few weeks he and they had the outlines of a treaty in hand. The boundary between the United States and Mexico would run west from the Gulf of Mexico along the Rio Grande to New Mexico, then west via the Gila River to the Gulf of California and overland to San Diego. The American government would assume responsibility for the claims of its citizens against Mexico and would pay the Mexican government $15 million for the territory transferred from Mexico to the United States.

  The treaty was signed on February 2, 1848, at the village of Guadalupe Hidalgo, outside Mexico City. Trist shortly left for Washington to deliver the treaty and explain why he had exceeded his orders. Polk was livid but perceived no alternative to submitting the treaty to the Senate. And when antislavery Whigs in the Senate tried to prevent its ratification, on grounds that it would open new territory to slavery, the president swallowed his anger at Trist and praised the treaty as a coup. “If the treaty in its present form is ratified,” he said, “there will be added to the U.S. an immense empire, the value of which twenty years hence it would be difficult to calculate.” Most Americans agreed with Polk, in principle if not in specifics, and after Southern Democrats began complaining that the treaty transferred too little territory to the United States and calling for the negotiations to be reopened, the Whigs swung to Polk and the treaty was ratified. The Mexican senate required longer to conclude that the treaty had to be approved, but in late May 1848 it took the painful step and seconded the ratification.

  While the diplomats and politicians wrangled, Grant and the other American soldiers diverted themselves as best they could. Grant attended a bullfight—“not wishing to leave the country without having witnessed the national sport,” he explained. One visit to the arena was enough. “The sight to me was sickening. 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.”