by John Waugh
23. Hill to Frances Russell Hill and Thomas Hill, 16 March 1847, Hill Family Papers.
24. Wilcox, The Mexican War, pp. 113–14; Charles Winslow Elliott, Winfield Scott: The Soldier and the Man (New York: Macmillan, 1937), p. 454.
25. Smith, Company “A”, p. 10, p. 13.
26. Ibid., p. 13, pp. 15–16.
27. McClellan to Elizabeth McClellan, 4 February 1847, McClellan Papers.
28. Daniel Harvey Hill, “The Real Stonewall Jackson,” Century Magazine 47 (February 1894), p. 624.
29. T. Harry Williams, The History of American Wars from 1745 to 1918 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), pp. 173–74.
30. William A. Keleher, Turmoil in New Mexico, 1846–1868 (Santa Fe: Rydal Press, 1952), p. 21.
31. Smith and Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos, p. 126.
32. The reporter is quoted in Smith and Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos, pp. 127–28.
33. From an account by Abert in Keleher, Turmoil in New Mexico, p. 117n. For detail on the aborted plans of insurrection also see Jacob P. Dunn, Massacres of the Mountains: A History of the Indian Wars of the Far West, 1815–1875 (New York: Archer House, 1958), p. 65; and E. Bennett Burton, “The Taos Rebellion,” Old Santa Fe: A Magazine of History, Archaeology, Genealogy and Biography 1 (October 1913), p. 179.
34. Lawrence R. Murphy, “The United States Army in Taos, 1847–1852,” New Mexico Historical Review 47 (January 1972), p. 33; Burton, “The Taos Rebellion,” pp. 180–83.
35. The engagement at Taos is described in Price’s official report of 15 February 1847, in Senate Exec. Doc. No. 1, 30 Cong., 1 sess., pp. 520–25. Added detail is in a letter from Oliver Hazard Perry Taylor to George W. Cullum, 20 July 1855, Cullum File, Class of 1846, U.S. Military Academy Library; and from Dunn, Massacres of the Mountains, p. 72.
That City Shall Soon Be Ours
1. Maury, Recollections of a Virginian, p. 34.
2. Ibid.
3. A lively and colorful account of the voyage to Vera Cruz and the landing in the bay is in Smith, The War with Mexico, vol. 2, pp. 17–26.
4. Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, p. 82.
5. Smith describes the activity of the engineers at Vera Cruz in Company “A”, p. 21, p. 24.
6. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field: Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U.S.A., ed. W. A. Croffut (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Knickerbocker Press, 1909), p. 241.
7. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico: The Mexican War Reminiscences of P. G. T. Beauregard, ed. T. Harry Williams (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956), p. 27.
8. Smith, Company “A”, pp. 17–20.
9. Edmund Hardcastle to his uncle, 27 March 1847, Edmund Lafayette Hardcastle, Journal and Letters, U.S. Military Academy Library.
10. Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field, p. 244.
11. The quotes are from Smith, The War with Mexico, vol. 2, p. 29.
12. Hardcastle to his uncle, 27 March 1847, Hardcastle Letters.
13. Turnley, Reminiscences, p. 85.
14. Hardcastle’s account of his twenty-four hours on the guns at Vera Cruz is in the letter to his uncle, 27 March 1847, Hardcastle Letters. Also see Derby, “Diary of Military Activities, 1846–1859,” a report to Col. J. J. Abert, Chief of Topographical Engineers, Derby Papers, box 6.
15. Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 13–14.
16. Jackson to Laura Arnold, 30 March 1847, Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, p. 85.
17. The statistics are from Turnley, Reminiscences, p. 87.
18. Hardcastle to his aunt, 10 April 1847, Hardcastle Letters.
19. A. P. Hill describes the buzzards of Vera Cruz in a letter to his parents, Frances Russell Hill and Thomas Hill, 23 October 1847, Hill Family Papers.
20. Smith, Company “A,” pp. 28–29; McClellan, The Mexican War Diary, p. 74.
21. Smith, Company “A,” p. 29.
22. McClellan, The Mexican War Diary, pp. 74–75.
23. Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 15–16.
24. Jackson to Laura Arnold, 22 April 1847, Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, p. 88.
25. Maury describes Twiggs in Recollections of a Virginian, pp. 29–30.
26. Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field, p. 250.
27. Derby, “Diary of Military Activities,” Derby Papers.
28. Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL.d, Written by Himself, 2 vols. (New York: Sheldon & Company, 1864), vol. 2, p. 433.
29. Smith, The War with Mexico vol. 2, pp. 51–52.
30. Maury at Cerro Gordo is from his Recollections of a Virginian, pp. 35–38. Reno’s role is mentioned in Robert Selph Henry, The Story of the Mexican War (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950), pp. 284–85. Also see Smith, The War with Mexico, vol. 2, p. 520.
31. Smith, The War with Mexico, vol. 2, p. 52.
32. Smith and Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos, p. 207.
33. The long grueling night on Atalaya Hill is described in “The Hardships of War,” correspondence of the New York Commercial Advertiser cited in the Cambridge (MA) Chronicle, 3 June 1847, in Smith and Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos, p. 208.
34. Smith, Company “A”, p. 30.
35. “The Hardships of War,” in Smith and Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos, p. 208.
36. Ibid., pp. 208–9.
37. Smith and Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos, p. 209.
38. Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 25 April 1847, Stewart, John Phoenix, Esq., pp. 50–52.
39. Stewart, John Phoenix, Esq., p. 52.
40. Ibid., pp. 3–4.
41. Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 25 April 1847, Stewart, John Phoenix, Esq., pp. 53–54.
42. Scott, Memoirs vol. 2, p. 438, p. 446, p. 450.
43. Maury tells of Derby in Recollections of a Virginian, pp. 36–39.
44. Raphael Semmes, The Campaign of General Scott in the Valley of Mexico (Cincinnati: Moore & Anderson, 1852), pp. 73–74.
45. John B. Weld to Mary Townsend Derby, 19 May 1847, Derby Papers, box 8.
46. Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 16–17.
47. Jackson to Laura Arnold, 25 May 1847, Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, p. 91.
48. Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 93–95, pp. 129–30.
49. The descriptive passages are by a Carolina soldier, H. Judge Moore, quoted in Smith and Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos, p. 227.
50. Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 17–18.
51. Smith, To Mexico with Scott, p. 189.
52. Jackson to Jonathan Arnold, 21, March 1848, Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, p. 134.
53. Scott, Memoirs vol. 2, p. 467.
The Seventeen-Minute Victory
1. Gardner, “Memoirs,” p. 22.
2. Gardner to his brother, 24 October 1847, Smith and Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos, p. 243.
3. The Pedregal is described in detail in Smith, The War with Mexico, vol. 2, p. 101.
4. George H. Gordon, “The Battles of Contreras and Churubusco,” in Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, vol. 13, Civil and Mexican Wars, 1861, 1846 (1913; reprint, Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Company, 1990), p. 577. Hereafter these Papers will be cited as MHSM. Gordon, a member of the class, writes from firsthand experience. Also see Lenoir Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, 2 vols. (1958; reprint, Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Company, 1988), vol. 1, pp. 103–4.
5. Jackson to Laura Arnold, 25 May 1847, Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, p. 92.
6. Jackson’s preference to be where honor beckoned and distinction waited is well known. See Arnold, Early LIfe and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, p. 95; Gardner, “Memoirs,” p. 18.
7. McClellan’s activity is described in Smith, Company “A”, pp. 36–37.
8. Sears, Georg
e B. McClellan, p. 22.
9. Hamlin, The Making of a Soldier, p. 71.
10. Gordon, “The Battles of Contreras and Churubusco,” pp. 579–83.
11. Hamlin, The Making of a Soldier, p. 71.
12. Smith, Company “A”, p. 38.
13. The events of the night of August 19 and the approach of the storming party in the early morning hours of the twentieth are in Gardner to his brother, 24 October 1847, Smith and Judah, Chronicles of the Gringos, pp. 243–44; and Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 25–27.
14. Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 27–28.
15. Maury, Recollections of a Virginian, p. 85.
16. Hamlin, The Making of a Soldier, pp. 71–72.
17. Entry of 20 August 1847, Hardcastle Journal.
18. Ibid.
19. Gardner’s account is in his “Memoirs,” pp. 29–31.
20. The image is borrowed from Ephraim Kirby Smith, To Mexico with Scott, pp. 200–1.
21. Hardcastle to his uncle, 24 August 1847, Hardcastle Letters; Robinson, “The Engineer Soldiers in the Mexican War,” p. 7.
22. Hardcastle to his uncle, 24 August 1847, Hardcastle Letters.
23. Gardner, “Memoirs,” p. 22. See opening paragraphs of this chapter.
24. Scott, Memoirs vol. 2, p. 492, p. 494, p. 501.
25. Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 31–33.
26. Hardcastle to his uncle, 24 August 1847, Hardcastle Letters.
To the Halls of the Montezumas
1. The description of the castle is a mosaic drawn from Arnold, The Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, p. 105; Elise Trigg Shields, “The Storming of Chapultepec,” Confederate Veteran 26 (September 1918), p. 399; and Scott, Memoirs vol. 2, p. 511.
2. Semmes, The Campaign of General Scott in the Valley of Mexico, p. 326.
3. Foster’s classmate, George Gordon, wrote a detailed account of the storming of the Molino in his “Battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec,” MHSM, vol. 13, Civil and Mexican Wars 1861, 1846. pp. 603–14.
4. Gordon was also to write Foster’s obituary many years later. The quote is from that work: “John G. Foster,” in Sixth Annual Reunion of the Association of the Graduates of the United States Military Academy … June 17th, 1875 (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1875), p. 36.
5. Ibid.
6. Hardcastle to his aunt, 2 September 1847, Hardcastle Letters.
7. Gordon, “Battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec,” pp. 613–14.
8. Foster to William Dutton, 12 May 1848, Dutton Papers.
9. Gordon, “John G. Foster,” p. 36.
10. McClellan to Foster, 5 May 1848, Frank G. Noyes, “Biographical Sketch of Maj.-Gen. John G. Foster, Son of New Hampshire, Soldier of the Republic,” The Granite Monthly 26 (June 1899), p. 335.
11. Noche Triste, “Night of Sorrows,” the battle in 1520 in which Cortez was driven with heavy losses from the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan by the rebelling Indians. He would return the next year, lay siege to the city, and seize the Aztec empire.
12. Gordon, “Battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec,” pp. 622–23.
13. Strategy for the assault is from Shields, “The Storming of Chapultepec,” pp. 399–400.
14. Jackson’s heroic stand at Chapultepec is mainly from Henderson, Stonewall Jackson, vol. 1, pp. 41–42. Also see Jackson, Memoirs of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, p. 43; Frank E. Vandiver, Mighty Stonewall (1957; reprint, College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1989), pp. 37–38; and Lester R. Dillon, Jr., “American Artillery in the Mexican War, 1846–1847,” Military History of Texas and the Southwest 11 (1973), p. 165.
15. Scott, Memoirs vol. 2, p. 515.
16. Gordon, “Battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec,” p. 628.
17. Scott, Memoirs vol. 2, p. 515. The description of the battle is a mosaic drawn from his Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 513–15; Shields, “The Storming of Chapultepec,” pp. 399–400; Henry, The Story of the Mexican War, p. 361; and Rodenbough and Haskin, The Army of the United States, p. 518.
18. Gordon, “Battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec,” p. 632.
19. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War vol. 1, p. 43.
20. Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, p. 110.
21. Smith, Company “A”, pp. 49–50.
22. Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico, p. 98; Wilcox, History of the Mexican War, p. 472.
23. Scott, Memoirs vol. 2, p. 538, p. 535.
24. Rodenbough and Haskin, The Army of the United States, p. 197.
25. Smith, Company “A”, p. 56.
26. Hardcastle to his aunt, 2 [?] September 1847, Hardcastle Letters. The date on the typescript version of this letter is incorrect. It was written instead sometime after the army entered the city.
27. Obituary of Alexander Perry Rodgers, undated, Cullum Files.
28. Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 31–34.
29. Childs is described in Smith, The War with Mexico vol. 2, p. 174.
30. Scott, Memoirs vol. 2, p. 550. Also see Morrison, “The Best School in the World,” pp. 53–54.
31. S. G. Merck, “Class of 1843,” Army and Navy Journal 39 (14 June 1902), p. 1028.
32. Hill to Frances Russell Hill and Thomas Hill, 23 October 1847, Hill Family Papers.
33. Smith, The War with Mexico vol. 2, p. 176.
34. Hill to Frances Russell Hill and Thomas Hill, 23 October 1847, Hill Family Papers.
35. Detail on the march to Puebla and the lifted siege is from Smith, The War with Mexico vol. 2, pp. 174–78.
36. Gardner, “Memoirs,” p. 33.
37. Maury, Recollections of a Virginian, p. 45.
38. Quoted in The Centennial of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, 1802–1902, 2 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), vol. 1, p. 602.
39. Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field, p. 310.
40. Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico, p. 56.
41. The Centennial of the United States Military Academy, vol. 1, p. 601, p. 604, p. 629.
42. On Stuart, see Benjamin R. Stuart, Magnolia Cemetery: An Interpretation of Some of Its Monuments and Inscriptions, with a Reminiscence of Captain James Stuart.… (Charleston, SC: Kahrs & Welch, 1896), pp. 24–25.
43. See Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, p. 115.
44. Ibid., pp. 116–17.
45. Gibbon relates this incident in Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War vol. 1, pp. 46–47.
46. Jackson to Laura Arnold, 26 October 1847; Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 128–29.
47. Company A’s return to West Point is remembered by Bailey in “My Boyhood at West Point,” p. 9. Derby’s quote is from Derby to Mary Townsend Derby, 1 November 1845, Derby Papers.
Indian Country
1. Wilson’s encounter with the Indian chief is described by his classmate, Oliver O. P. Taylor, in a letter to George W. Cullum, 20 July 1855, Cullum File.
2. Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observation of Men and Events, p. 253.
3. Augustus Meyers, Ten Years in the Ranks, U.S. Army (New York: Stirling Press, 1914), p. 49.
4. Williams, The History of American Wars, p. 188.
5. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, p. 12.
6. Ibid.
7. Ganoe, The History of the United States Army, p. 230.
8. The Centennial of the United States Military Academy, vol. 1, p. 526.
9. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, pp. 6–7.
10. The musketoon is described in Zenus R. Bliss, “Extracts from the Unpublished Memoirs of Maj. Gen. Z. R. Bliss,” Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States 38 (January-February 1906), p. 128.
11. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, pp. 26–27.
12. Williams, The History of American Wars, pp. 189–90.
13. Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army, enlarged edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p
. 240.
14. The quotes are all from Averam B. Bender, “The Soldier in the Far West, 1848–1860,” Pacific Historical Review 8 (June 1939), pp. 161–62.
15. Smith to his mother, 17 June 1856, Joseph Howard Parks, General Edmund Kirby Smith, C. S. A. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954), pp. 90–91.
16. The Centennial of the United States Military Academy, 1, p. 488.
17. Teresa Griffen Viele, Following the Drum: A Glimpse of Frontier Life (1858; reprint, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), pp. 174–75.
18. Stuart, Magnolia Cemetery, pp. 25–27.
19. Ibid., p. 24.
20. Maury, Recollections of a Virginian, p. 57.
21. Stuart’s premonitions and death are described in Stuart, Magnolia Cemetery, pp. 26–27; and Maury, Recollections of a Virginian, pp. 57–59.
22. Quoted in Gerhard Spieler, “Captain Stuart—a Soldier’s Life, a Soldier’s Death,” Beaufort (SC) Gazette (12 December 1974), copy in the Cullum File.
23. McClellan, The Mexican War Diary, p. 14n.
24. Stuart, Magnolia Cemetery, p. 29.
25. Hamlin, The Making of a Soldier, p. 76.
26. Maury, “General T. J. (‘Stonewall’) Jackson,” p. 312.
27. Taylor to George W. Cullum, 20 July 1855, Cullum File.
India-Rubber Women and Buffalo Men
1. Charles P. Roland and Richard C. Robbins, eds., “The Diary of Eliza (Mrs. Albert Sidney) Johnston: The Second Cavalry Comes to Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 60 (April 1957), p. 467.
2. Viele, Following the Drum, p. 17.
3. The fantasy portrait of the soldiering wife is also from Teresa Viele’s delightful memoir, Following the Drum, pp. 13–15.
4. Quoted in Edward M. Coffman, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784–1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 104.
5. Eliza describes the typical marching day in Roland and Robbins, “The Diary of Eliza Johnston,” pp. 468–69. Also see George F. Price, Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry (1883; reprint, New York: Antiquarian Press, 1959), p. 32.
6. Harold B. Simpson, “The Second U.S. Cavalry in Texas, 1855–1861,” Texas Military History 8 (1970), p. 57.