The Training Ground

by Martin Dugard

  Back at the battlefield, a cold rain fell all day. Burial parties picked through the bloated corpses, finding Mexican and American bodies side by side on the steep and rocky slopes of what the Americans called Telegraph Hill. The air smelled of rotting flesh and decay. Thick clouds of flies buzzed around the corpses, which were already turning black. Many of the bodies lacked limbs, and some had already been shorn of their boots, wallets, and wedding rings by scavenging volunteers who had crept out onto the battlefield to steal from their fellow soldiers.

  One member of the burial detail thought something was unusual about one of the dead. For starters, he wasn’t bloated and didn’t smell of death. There was just a small round hole in the right side of his uniform, where the musket ball had passed through his intestine. On closer examination, he appeared to be breathing. The man was an officer, and his body was quickly placed atop a stretcher and taken to the surgeon of the regiment, Dr. Adam McLaren. The wound was cleaned and patched, and the patient placed under close supervision. Further investigation revealed that he had been in reserve with the rest of Worth’s division but was so eager to do battle that he’d found his way into the fight.

  “Among the wounded on our side,” Grant wrote to Julia in his description of Cerro Gordo, “was Lt. Dana, very dangerously.”

  Dana would live, but his war was over.

  Lee’s first taste of combat had left him a changed man. He had seen for the first time the effects of cannon fire on the human body and the emotional cost of injury to noncombatants. He would never view war the same way again. “You have no idea what a horrible sight a field of battle is,” he wrote his son.

  But Cerro Gordo had altered him professionally, too. Lee was now on the fast track to greatness. Twiggs took pains to praise Lee in his official after-battle report. “Although whatever I may say may add little to the good reputation of Captain Lee, of the engineer corps, yet I may indulge in the pleasure of speaking of the invaluable services which he rendered me from the time I left the main road, until he conducted Colonel Riley’s brigade to its position in the rear of the enemy’s strong work on the Jalapa road. I consulted him with confidence, and adopted his suggestions with entire assurance. His gallantry and good conduct on both days deserve the highest praise.”

  Scott was no less sparing. “I am impelled to make special mention of the services of Captain R. E. Lee, engineers. This officer, greatly distinguished at the siege of Vera Cruz, was again indefatigable, during these operations, in reconnaissance as daring as laborious, and of the utmost value.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Pressing the Advantage

  APRIL 19, 1846

  While it was a most serious and inspiring sight, it was a painful one to me,” Grant wrote of Cerro Gordo. “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. 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.”

  Grant and most of Worth’s division had been held in reserve and did not see any action. Their absence from the fighting was difficult, for it was clear to all that Cerro Gordo was a battle that would live on in history. Many would later compare it to the Battle at Thermopylae, in 480 b.c., where two armies of vastly different sizes waged war on precarious terrain. To have watched from afar was a bitter sort of pill.

  Still, by the following morning reality had set in: the war was not over. Scott’s army recognized the prize for what it was: a very vital piece of real estate that had been captured on the way to Mexico City. Now it was time to move on.

  The elated soldiers marched to Jalapa, a lovely town set on a mountain slope, facing down toward the ocean. There, among the fragrance of flowers and fruit orchards, they would halt and await further orders, content in the knowledge that yellow fever would not pose a threat at such a high altitude.

  General Worth’s division dashed even farther inland, chasing Santa Anna’s army. The fleeing Mexicans were before them the whole time. Worth expected them to turn and fight at any moment. Yet even though the Mexicans once again outnumbered the Americans, there was no battle. The Mexicans raced toward Puebla, pushing through Jalapa (even though Santa Anna’s favorite daughter lived there and it was the site of Perote, a fortified castle the American soldiers had heard about for weeks). That meant that Puebla now represented the last true obstacle between the American army and Mexico City.

  “My dear Julia,” Grant wrote, “the pursuit was so close that the Mexicans could not establish themselves in another strong pass which they had already fortified, and when they got to the castle at Perote they passed on, leaving it too with all of its artillery to fall into our hands.” By early May, the American army left Perote and advanced to Puebla, taking it without a battle. Now only Mexico City remained. For the time being, however, Puebla would be home. There, Scott would halt the army for three long months as the volunteers returned to the United States, their one-year period of enlistment having come to an end at a most ill-timed moment. Only when he received reinforcements, later in the summer, would Scott push on to Mexico City.

  AMONG THOSE TO depart the Mexican War were Jeff Davis and the First Mississippi — they had served out the war in Monterrey. As Zachary Taylor looked on, wearing full dress uniform for one of the few times that anyone could remember, Davis assembled the Rifles rank and file. “We had never seen the old hero in uniform, but on this occasion he came out in our front in the regulation blue ‘from tip to toe.’ ” Taylor gave a short speech, tugging self-consciously on his uncomfortable vest. He wished the First Mississippi well, saying he hoped that they arrived home safely and that their private lives would be just as memorable as their “bright and glorious” military careers.

  Davis then ordered the ranks to move into the same place that they had stood the night before the battle of Monterrey. The 1,000-man force now reduced to just 376, there were huge gaps between the men where the lost soldiers had once stood. “In dress parade on the same ground in the same place they did the even before the battle of Monterey,” wrote a North Carolina volunteer looking on. “Each standing in the tracks he then stood in near as he could be. It was a solemn sight. There were great gaps and not a man to fill it up — here were three — then farther along two. The Regiment looked like an old comb with most of the teeth broken out.”

  Then the time came to close ranks and march home.

  “My daughter, sir,” Taylor said to Davis, finally admitting that he had been at fault by opposing his marriage to Knox, “was a better judge of men than I was.”

  And then they were off. Great crowds greeted the First Mississippi in New Orleans three weeks later. They were feted at banquet after banquet. Their rifles were their calling card, and the people of New Orleans were insistent that the First carry their guns to every social occasion.

  On June 14, Davis and four companies of the First Mississippi disembarked from the steamboats Natchez and Saint Mary in Vicksburg, home at last. But Davis and the First did not step off those steamships in the garish red and white uniforms that once made them so easily visible. The State of Mississippi had sent a new outfit to the unit that was more in keeping with the national spirit. The new uniforms had reached them at the mouth of the Rio Grande. When the First Mississippi walked down the gangplank and back onto Mississippi soil, they now wore blue uniforms, just like their regular army brethren. And so, on that day, after a lively barbecue that included thirteen rounds of toasting, the military career of Jefferson Davis came to an end — in blue.

  V

  THE AZTEC CLUB

  The route followed by the army from Puebla to the City of Mexico was over Río Frío Mountain, the road leading over which, at the highest point, is about eleven thousand feet above tide water. The pass thr
ough this mountain might have been easily defended, but it was not; and the advanced division reached the summit in three days after leaving Puebla. The City of Mexico lies west of Río Frío Mountain, on a plain backed by another mountain six miles farther west, with others still nearer on the north and south. Between the western base of Río Frío and the City of Mexico there are three lakes: Chalco and Xochimilco on the left and Texcoco on the right, extending to the east end of the City of Mexico. Chalco and Texcoco are divided by a narrow strip of land over which the direct road to the city runs. Xochimilco is also to the left of the road, but at a considerable distance south of it, and is connected to Lake Chalco by a narrow channel. There is a high rocky mound, called El Peñon, on the right of the road, springing up from the low rocky flat ground dividing the lakes. This mound was strengthened by entrenchments at its base and summit, and rendered a direct attack impracticable.

  — ULYSSES S. GRANT, MEMOIRS

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Nothing Can Stop This Army”

  AUGUST 18, 1847

  Grant, much to his disgust, was still a quartermaster. When he had attempted to resign the post, Colonel Garland pointedly reminded him that quartermaster was “an assigned duty, and not an office that can be resigned.” As “this duty was imposed by a military order from a superior officer,” Garland told him, “the duty cannot be revoked except by a like order relieving Lieutenant Grant from the duty.”

  Grant was not unaware that his job had been an important one. To consolidate his forces and ensure that no American food or ammunition fell into the hands of Mexican soldiers who might hijack them along the National Road, Scott had cut the 175-mile supply line with Veracruz and forced his army to live off the land. Grant’s job during the three-month delay in Puebla was to ride out with empty wagons and purchase produce and goods from local farmers. As a result, he often returned looking dirty and unkempt, his uniform unbuttoned for comfort. The date has been lost to history, but sometime during this period, Lee paid a visit to Garland’s command and remonstrated Grant for his lack of spit and polish. It was the first time the two men ever met, and the wording was harsh enough that Grant would remember it for the rest of his life — and would remind Lee of it again when next they met on a Palm Sunday far in the future.

  Meanwhile, Scott’s ambitious plan had left many observers predicting his doom. Britain’s Duke of Wellington, the vaunted hero of Waterloo, had even proclaimed that “Scott is lost.” But while Scott’s army was cut off in Mexico, they were certainly not lost, thanks to the efforts of diligent quartermasters like Grant. The very fate of the army had depended upon his initiative, and Grant had come through. But now, as Scott’s army gazed upon Mexico City after those months of boredom and rest in Puebla, he longed to fight. Ever since the day he had left Saint Louis and made his way through the war, Grant had been certain that his homecoming was right around the corner. And finally it was. If the Americans succeeded in capturing the Mexican capital, there would be no more war. Santa Anna’s army would be defeated once and for all, and the long-delayed moment when Grant took Julia into his arms once again would be imminent.

  The movement from Puebla to Mexico City had begun on August 7, with Twiggs in the lead. Divisions under the command of Worth, Quitman, and Pillow followed at one-day intervals. New volunteers had been trickling in all summer, replacing the seven regiments that had departed for Veracruz and home on June 6 and 7. Scott’s army had dwindled to 7,113 men at that point, but the ranks had now swelled to 10,738 officers and men. By August 11, Twiggs was within fifteen miles of the capital, in the village of Ayotla. Scott joined him later that day and ordered the other divisions to spread out and occupy the neighboring towns of Chimalpa and Chalco. It had been almost a year to the day since Santa Anna returned from exile in Cuba, on August 14, 1846. Numerous attempts had been made to broker a peace. Santa Anna had rebuffed them all. Now he waited inside Mexico City with a force of 30,000, aching for one last desperate chance to crush the Americans. He had forbidden any information about the city’s defenses to be published in any way, had conducted rigorous rifle training for his new troops and prepared for a state of siege by grinding every last bit of local wheat and storing it inside the city, and had evicted all American citizens. He had circulated an order forbidding civilian horses and carriages to be in the streets when the Americans attacked, and another making it illegal for anyone other than old men, women, and children to leave Mexico City without a special pass. Most ominously, Santa Anna had ordered that a Mexican version of the Paixhans gun be cast and poured for the city’s defense. If Mexico City would be the battle that would end the war, Santa Anna wanted that finale to be on his terms.

  Grant, meanwhile, had been in the war since the very beginning, back when it was just a rumor. Barring calamity, fighting or not, he would be there at the finish, too.

  MEXICO CITY PRESENTED a puzzle. The capital was nestled high in the mountains, in a low valley forty-six miles wide. Three large lakes — Chalco, Texcoco, and Xochimilco — lay just east of the city. The road from Puebla wound around them. The terrain was marshy in some areas and a volcanic moonscape in others. A reconnaissance of the approaches was in order. For that, Scott once again called upon Lee.

  The Virginian had been promoted for his work at Cerro Gordo, and now it was Major Robert E. Lee who rode forth on August 12 and 13 to observe the Mexican defenses. As suspected, the main road into Mexico City was heavily defended. Santa Anna had anticipated Scott’s strategy and placed a massive force atop a hill known as El Peñon. The final seven miles into Mexico City was a narrow causeway built over marshy ground, hardly ideal for rapid troop or artillery movement. In an attempt to save the city from bombardment, the Mexican commander was positioning his forces around El Peñon’s perimeter to stop the Americans long before they could enter.

  “The hill of El Peñon is about 300 feet high,” Lee observed, “having different plateaus of different elevations. It stands in the waters of Lake Texcoco. Its base is surrounded by a dry trench, and its sides arranged with breastworks from its base to its crest. It was armed with thirty pieces of cannon, and defended by 7,000 men under Santa Anna in person.”

  That was just the beginning. Batteries lined the causeway, and a secondary road that circumvented El Peñon was also fortified with cannons. That path came to a swampy end in the village of Mexicaltzingo, which meant that the American troops could either fight on the wide-open road, exposing them to fire and providing nowhere to run, or they could attempt the impossible by trying to wage war in a swamp, which would make them easy targets for Mexican artillery. Santa Anna’s decision to fall back into Mexico City, they now realized, had been an act of brilliance. Everything favored him and his men.

  Scott wrestled for a solution to this complex military problem. He had long ago decided against invading from the north, even though his scouts suggested that the city was weakly fortified from that approach. He briefly considered storming El Peñon, but he knew that the cost in lives would be too great. And the secondary road into Mexicaltzingo was just as fraught with peril.

  There was one final option. It was a huge loop down around Lake Chalco and Lake Xochimilco that would bring Scott’s troops up under the belly of Mexico City. They would enter from a point due south, near the village of San Augustin, far to the left of the marshes and fortified causeways that were sure to spell doom.

  But this southern route was further proof that there was no easy way into the capital. For while the road around the two lakes was well worn (though covered in water at times), a vast lava barrier would stop the army cold at San Augustin. Known as the Pedregal, the volcanic terrain was so daunting that the Mexican army believed it was impossible for a bird to make it from one side to the other. “This Pedregal is a vast surface of volcanic rocks and scoria broken into every possible form, presenting sharp ridges and deep fissures, exceedingly difficult even in the daytime for passage of infantry, and utterly impassable by artillery, cavalry, or single horsemen,”
wrote Lieutenant Henry Hunt, an 1839 West Point graduate. “Indeed, it appears like a sea of such lava suddenly congealed, with here and there a clump of hardy bushes or dwarf trees which have managed to force an existence from the apparently sterile rocks.”

  On the opposite side was a plateau, guarded by six thousand entrenched Mexican troops with a complement of twenty-nine guns. But beyond that was Mexico City. If Scott could somehow send his army through the Pedregal, he would hit Santa Anna at his weakest spot.

  On August 18, Lee was ordered to find a path through the lava.

  The Pedregal was five miles wide and three miles from south to north. On August 18, Lee and Lieutenant P. G. T. Beauregard, a Louisiana Creole who had graduated from West Point in 1838, ventured out into the wasteland. Carefully and cautiously, they picked their way through the craggy terrain. On its western side they came across what looked to be a game trail or a smuggler’s path. They followed the trail for three miles, until they surprised a group of Mexican pickets who had ventured in from the Pedregral’s northern rim. As the Mexicans ran off, Lee scurried up a ridge. From the top he was able to look down and see the 6,000 Mexican forces on the opposite side of the Pedregal: he had found the way across.

  Lee and Beauregard reported their findings to Scott. After some deliberation, it was decided that Lee would return the next morning with a company of engineers to help him build a road through the Pedregal, a task that would make the boulevard he had constructed overnight at Cerro Gordo look like child’s play. It was to be large enough to handle men and artillery. A fatigue detail of five hundred men from General Gideon Pillow’s division would provide the labor. The rest of Pillow’s division, along with all of Twiggs’s and two batteries of flying artillery, would protect them.