A Gallant Little Army

by Timothy D Johnson

  Twiggs’s clumsiness had eliminated the possibility of catching the Mexicans completely off guard. Santa Anna spent the night strengthening his left flank to guard against another American push in that area. He sent more troops, the Second Light Infantry and the Fourth Regular Infantry under General Ciriaco Vásquez, to protect El Telégrafo, and he instructed Captain Robles to construct fortifications for an additional battery of three guns. He also personally oversaw the work on an additional battery near the road just west of the hill to protect the main camp. These steps, however, were just a precaution, for he continued to focus his attention myopically on the defense of the three ridges south of the road, expecting the main American advance to come there. In fact, the Mexicans believed that on the morning of April 17, they had stopped an all-out American attack, thus proving that their flank was impregnable. However, the next day’s events would prove that the Mexican fortifications along their main line on El Telégrafo were incomplete and inadequate to halt an attack in force.38

  Although the battle was not yet over, Joseph Smith, who had penned the prayer for protection on April 11, got out his diary and, sitting atop La Atalaya, expressed his gratitude that he had survived the day. “Many times during this day has my life been in peril from the enemy’s shots, but God still spared me in answer to my prayers. Praised be his name.” 39

  chapter five

  Cerro Gordo

  Tomorrow Will Settle the Affair

  The attack was made as ordered, and perhaps there was not a battle of the Mexican war, or of any other, where orders issued before an engagement were nearer being a correct report of what afterwards took place.

  —Ulysses S. Grant, Fourth Infantry Regiment

  Some soldiers spent the night of April 17–18 trying to rest, but anxious about what the morrow might hold. William Campbell wrote to his wife during the evening that “tomorrow will settle the affair between Genl. Scott & Genl Santa Anna.” Captain Ephraim Kirby Smith, the forty-year-old brother of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith and the son of an infantryman who had fought with distinction at Lundy’s Lane in 1814, was with the Fifth Infantry in Worth’s division at Plan del Río. After hearing the distant cannon fire of battle on April 17, he and his comrades discussed the prospects of battle for the next day. “We all think it will be the last fight of the war.”1

  Before dawn on Sunday, April 18, General Pillow prepared his brigade to march from Plan del Río five miles southeast of Harney’s and Twiggs’s position at La Atalaya. By 6:00 A.M., the brigade of volunteers (First and Second Tennessee and First and Second Pennsylvania) was on the road heading for the Cerro Gordo Pass. They marched for three miles before reaching the designated spot where they were supposed to leave the road to the left and start their trek through the hills and underbrush to an attack position in front of the three defended ridges. Scott had intended this attack on the Mexican right to occupy that portion of the enemy army and distract attention away from Twiggs’s action on their left flank. But some in the army thought this “a most foolish and unnecessary move” and that it had been pressed on Scott by Pillow, who wanted an opportunity for glory.2

  On April 13, 15, and 16, Lieutenant Zealous Tower and Lieutenant George McClellan, accompanied at least part of the time by Pillow, had conducted extensive reconnaissance in the area to determine enemy strength and to chart the best route for an approach on the position. Now, as the infantry filed off the road to get into position, Pillow rode up to McClellan and told him that he wanted to change the approach route that McClellan and Tower had chosen. After learning of Pillow’s impulsive desire, Tower protested, but he did not insist that they stick with the original plan. The new route took the troops down a narrow trail, which had to be traversed single file. Consequently, they became strung out for a long distance, which slowed their progress. They could already hear the sound of battle in the vicinity of El Telégrafo, which signaled their tardiness in getting into position.3

  As the sun came up, at the other end of the battlefield, Captain Gustavus Smith was back up on La Atalaya standing next to the battery that he had helped prepare. Lee, who was everywhere on the American right flank and seemed never to sleep, appeared and instructed Smith to send him several men who could cut a road around the base of the hill to facilitate the movement of more artillery, then to report to Colonel Harney, who was preparing to attack. Lee then headed back down the north face of the hill to begin leading other units in a wide-arching circle around the hill and toward the road in the rear of Santa Anna’s army. The Second Infantry and the Fourth Artillery of Colonel Riley’s brigade, followed by three volunteer regiments, the Third and Fourth Illinois and the New York Regiment, under General Shields, followed Lee’s lead and began their movement at the same time an artillery duel atop the two hills began.4

  Soon after daylight, the American battery on La Atalaya opened fire on the enemy position on the adjacent hill. Mexican trumpeters blew their horns, and soon their artillery opened in response. At 7:00 A.M., Harney took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, signaling that he was ready to get down to business. Then, with sword in hand, he shouted in his thunderous voice, “Come on, boys,” and led the brigade forward. Down the hill and into the valley they went, then up the steep northeastern side of El Telégrafo. Keeping their footing was difficult because in places the hillsides were “almost perpendicular,” and some of the men used the butts of their muskets for support. The Mexican guns were firing grape and canister, and the fire was so heavy that they “thined our ranks with vengence,” reported Benjamin Wingate. The enemy fire was so thick that “it appeared to me like I could have reached out my hands in any direction and found shots thrown at us from the Mexican batterys.” Another described the hillside as a “sheet of belching flame & smoke.”5

  Even so, the men pressed steadily onward, yelling as they went. Future Confederate general Richard Ewell was with the dragoons, who were being held in reserve in the rear, but his brother Tom, a lieutenant with the Rifle Regiment, walked “deliberately down the slope . . . in full view of the Mexicans” without flinching or ducking a single time. Just before reaching the top of El Telégrafo, the officers halted the men and instructed them to lie down so that they were shielded by the curvature of the ground. While in this position, barely fifty yards from the Mexican works, they caught their breath and prepared for the order to charge.6

  At this point, Captain Smith asked for and received permission to creep up the hill to get a closer look at the enemy, and he came back and reported to Colonel Harney that “we could dash over their works without a halt.” While Smith was making his report, a steady fire of musketry opened on Harney’s left flank from the direction of the road to the south. They were men of the Mexican Sixth Infantry, reinforcements that had been dispatched from the Mexican center, and they occupied “a nest of surface quarry holes which gave them protection.” Harney told two companies of riflemen to turn left to meet this threat, and he instructed them to advance when he gave the order to charge.7

  Meanwhile, Lee had been guiding Riley’s and Shields’s men in a westerly direction across the northern base of El Telégrafo in an attempt to envelop the Mexican left and seize the road in the rear. From atop the hill, General Vásquez had spotted this movement in the distance and had sent his Fourth Infantry and a piece of artillery to a spur that jutted out along the northwest side of the hill. From there, the Mexicans had commenced an annoying fire on the flanking column. General Twiggs, who was in command of those troops, first sent two companies then the entire Second Infantry and Fourth Artillery under Riley to engage these enemy troops.8 Riley wheeled his units left and attacked, while Shields maintained his original course and continued to push on toward the road with his three regiments. Riley’s men were now advancing on El Telégrafo’s northwest slope, and Harney’s brigade was poised for a charge along a line that ran from the north to the east side of the hill. This placed Vásquez in a dangerous vice with Riley threatening to cut off his line of retrea
t to the town.

  On the northern and eastern slopes, men of Harney’s brigade sprang up and rushed forward at his command. In seconds, they were jumping over the Mexicans’ improvised stone and dirt defenses. What followed was “a short, but bloody, hand to hand struggle, in which bayonets, swords, pistols, and butts of muskets were freely used.” Tom Ewell of the Rifles was among the first to reach the enemy line. With a leap, he was inside the works and instantly saw “about 200 men lying down ready to fire, . . . I passed my sword through the first man. The next was aiming at me.” Just as Ewell struck the musket with his sword to deflect the Mexican’s aim, it discharged, and the round entered his abdomen just left of his navel. He was gut shot—a wound generally considered to be fatal. Earl Van Dorn, a veteran of the Battle of Monterey the previous year, went over the works with the Seventh Infantry and killed two of the defenders during the melee.9

  The Mexicans abandoned their first defensive line and fell back to a second position. The opposing lines exchanged several rounds in a close range duel of musketry until the Americans once again sprang forward, bringing about another deadly hand-to-hand struggle. It was “a kind of fighting which I hope never to see again,” remembered Barna Upton, who thought “it seemed like murder to see men running bayonets into one anothers breasts.” Lieutenant Barnard Bee, who fifteen years later would use the term “Stonewall” to describe Thomas Jackson at First Bull Run, ran into the works and found a Mexican soldier coming at him with bayonet lowered. With his sword, Bee parried the enemy’s thrust but suffered a cut on his hand in the process. The lieutenant then ran his opponent through with his sword, and his own blood, along with that of the Mexican, mingled together staining the entire blade to the hilt.10

  The Mexicans fought bravely, but they could not withstand the converging assaults of Harney’s and Riley’s troops. By the time Harney’s men crossed bayonets with the enemy on the crest, Riley had cleared his opponents from the spur. The struggle atop the hill lasted several minutes, but soon Mexican troops began to melt away and retreat down the back side of the hill. Some tried to mix in with the wounded who were retiring down the southwest slope, causing Santa Anna to send staff officers to stop their retreat and order them back to their posts. Some of them did return to the chaotic fighting, but the trickle of retreating soldiers quickly turned into a flood, and the Mexican line gave way to the growing number of American soldiers who breached the works. As one Mexican source reported, as soon as American attackers fell, they “were instantly replaced by others, who seemed to reproduce them.” General Vásquez was among the growing number of Mexican casualties, mortally wounded by a shot in the face.11

  Among the storming party was Captain John B. Magruder, whose First Artillery fought as infantrymen. Magruder was a West Point graduate from Virginia and had a reputation for being hot tempered. When the enemy line broke, he and a few others gravitated to the abandoned enemy cannon, and they turned the guns on the retreating foe—a deed for which Magruder won a brevet to major. Panic was beginning to grip the Mexican army; they began to run “like a flock of frightened sheep.” Young Lieutenant Thomas Jackson observed Magruder and was impressed by his fearless and decisive action. A few weeks later, when the opportunity arose, Jackson got himself transferred to Magruder’s command.12

  As the enemy line broke, Riley turned his men toward the village and ordered them to charge directly into the main Mexican camp. They did so, firing at will at the fleeing enemy troops. Almost simultaneously, Shields’s men, having completed their wide arch under Lee’s direction, burst out of the chaparral and literally into the enemy camp adjacent to the road and the town. Their progress had been slow through the thorny and almost impenetrable thickets, and in some places, they had to move in single file through the rough terrain. As they emerged into the clearing, some Mexican soldiers panicked, while others began to fire their muskets and turn cannon in their direction. Shields quickly formed five companies of the Fourth Illinois and ordered them to attack. As they did, six enemy guns opened fire with grapeshot, seriously wounding Shields in the process. As the Americans rushed into the camp, they overran ranches and buildings that were being used by the Mexican army, and within minutes, they had accomplished Scott’s objective by taking up a position to block the Mexican retreat. In the confusion, Lee came across a young Mexican boy, a bugler or perhaps a drummer, who had been wounded in the arm. He was pinned underneath a wounded Mexican soldier, and nearby, a little girl sobbed helplessly over the plight of her young friend. Lee looked at the barefoot girl with waist-length hair, her “large black eyes . . . streaming with tears” and took pity on her and the boy. He gave instructions to a subordinate to lift the man off of the youngster and see that they both received medical treatment.13

  Chaos reigned in the Mexican army. Santa Anna, who had started the battle near the middle of his lines on the National Road, funneled reinforcements over to his left as the threat mounted on El Telégrafo, and eventually went over to that part of the battlefield to personally take charge. Now with that end of his line disintegrating, he, like many of his men, began to look for the fastest way off of the battlefield and out of harm’s way.14

  On the Mexican right, south of the road, it was the Americans who had been having a tough go of it since early morning. When the sun rose in the eastern sky, the battle already underway, Pillow and his brigade were hustling to catch up with the day’s events. At 8:30, they still were not in position to attack the batteries firmly ensconced at the end of the three ridges. Progress over the rough terrain had been slowed by the need to cut away the dense chaparral that dotted the area. The narrow, unfamiliar path resulted in the four regiments being strung out for an extended distance. According to the original plan, Pillow’s brigade was to attack the enemy battery closest to the river, or on the extreme Mexican right. Such an approach would protect the Americans’ left flank, and it would negate the northernmost battery closest to the road.

  To further support the attack, the Americans had placed, with great difficulty, a howitzer, commanded by Lieutenant Roswell Ripley, on a ridge south of the river. Under Ripley’s supervision, three companies of New York volunteers had spent the better part of twelve hours pulling the heavy gun for two and a half miles over hills and through gullies to get it in place in time to support Pillow’s attack. But Pillow nullified his advantage by deciding to attack two of the enemy batteries: the one closest to the river and the one next to it on the middle ridge. Thus, artillery (nineteen guns in all) and musketry (almost 2,000 infantrymen) from all three ridges would now be in play. Ripley later commented that if Pillow had stayed with the original attack plan, he would have “availed himself of the support” offered by the howitzer’s covering fire, thus improving his chances of success.15

  Battle of Cerro Gordo. From Donald S. Frazier, ed., The United States and Mexico at War (New York: Macmillan, 1998). Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group.

  Pillow had designated the First Pennsylvania and the Second Tennessee as the assaulting units supported by the First Tennessee and the Second Pennsylvania, respectively. Now, at close to 9 o’clock, Colonel William T. Haskell worked, with some difficulty, to get his Second Tennessee aligned to attack the middle ridge with its eight guns and a thousand defenders. Meanwhile, Colonel Francis M. Wynkoop was having even less luck getting his badly scattered First Pennsylvania deployed for an attack on the five cannon and five hundred infantry posted on the southern ridge. Worse, Pillow’s two other regiments were not in position to offer support.16 The situation on the American left was a mess.

  The Americans were concealed by the terrain and the underbrush but were close enough to hear Mexican officers barking orders in the distance. Haskell had only two of his companies in position when Pillow shouted, “Why the Hell don’t Colonel Wynkoop file to the right?” Whereupon a bugle from the Mexican lines sounded an alarm, and enemy artillery opened with grape and canister. Pillow immediately ordered Haskell to attack, but the colonel did not know whether to
advance in such a disorganized state or to disobey orders and remain under cover. Haskell was a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer and a veteran of the Seminole War. His brother, Charles, was among those massacred by Mexican troops at Goliad in 1836, and his desire for revenge got the better of him. He gave the order to charge, and the companies that were not yet in line simply left the trail, pushed their way through the chaparral, and, in pell-mell fashion, joined the unorganized assault.17

  They were three hundred yards from their objective; much of it covered with thick underbrush “so dense and full of thorns that we were obliged to cut our way through it with bill hooks.” At a distance of about two hundred yards, the Mexicans had cut away most of the chaparral and had stacked the bushes along their front to form a “thorny brush entanglement . . . about waist high.” It was a crude abatis, which the Americans found difficult to wade through. Then, at about a hundred yards, the attackers burst into open terrain, where they were easily picked off by the well-protected Mexican troops. The entire area became deadly ground for the volunteers—a “bloody spectacle,” as one Tennessean described it.18

  The Second Tennessee rushed forward into a hail of enemy fire that stopped its initial charge. Haskell had his hat shot away by canister, leaving his long hair flowing free. Wynkoop’s First Pennsylvania, which had been assigned to go into battle on Haskell’s left, was nowhere in sight. They were to the rear, still trying to get organized but taking enemy fire nonetheless. The Second Pennsylvania, assigned to support Haskell’s regiment, was still not up. Pillow dispatched staff officers to both Pennsylvania regiments in an effort to get the former to initiate its designated assault and to get the latter to hurry along so as to assist in the attack. It is likely that the lieutenant bearing orders for Wynkoop never made his way through the thick brush and enemy fire to deliver Pillow’s orders. Thus, the Second Tennessee went into the battle unsupported and as a result suffered heavy casualties. Some of the men tried to find cover behind bushes, while others ran to the rear. Several dozen “retreating” Tennesseans ran through the lines of the recently arrived Second Pennsylvania, causing that support unit to withdraw. An angry Haskell went to find Pillow.19