The preeminence of the Church in Puebla, more omnipresent than in other cities, tended to reinforce negative opinions already garnered before the army got there. Especially impressive to the Americans was the ornate seventeenth-century cathedral, Cathedral de las Angelos, with its marble floor, silver candelabras, and gold gilding. Will Lytle went inside and was “overwhelmed by the gorgeous magnificence of everything around me.” Its splendor seemed to confirm the impression that the church fleeced the impoverished masses. Thomas Barclay, a Pennsylvania volunteer, thought that “The holy fathers . . . are content with vast possessions . . . treasures amassed by a system of robberies for centuries and with palaces both as residences and places of worship. . . . Clothed in silk they fare sumptuously every day . . . and woe to the Mexican who incurs their displeasure.” He went on to assert that those “who rule Mexico endeavor to keep down every feeling of progress or improvement. Two great parties here divide all power and wealth—the Church and the Army. . . . [T]hey wink at the tyranny and excesses of each other.”31
Such circumstances, however, proved to be good for the American army. The agreement of church officials to accept the American occupation was crucial, and if the church members “blindly” followed their lead, it was a significant advantage for the army. The American high command had indeed redoubled its efforts to appease the clergy in Puebla, even though soldiers often resented such efforts. On Sunday, May 23, General Worth and his entire staff attended worship at the great cathedral, and as one observer reported, they all knelt on the marble floor like everyone else. The church hierarchy could not but notice the stark contrast between the Americans’ magnanimous treatment and that of their own government, which had begun to tax the church heavily to pay for the war. By showing deference to church officials, Scott also hoped to lend moral support to a rumored political revolt by the Clerical Party in Mexico City. Meanwhile, Santa Anna attempted to counteract Scott’s skillful pacification. After hearing of American efforts to placate the priests, the Mexican leader issued through a Mexico City newspaper a warning regarding the crafty Yankees, who paid much attention to the pretty women of Jalapa, but on arriving in the pious environs of Puebla suddenly became devout.32
Army discipline remained a top priority both for the safety of the troops and the pacification of the people. In accord with Scott’s orders, no one could leave their quarters without a pass and a weapon. No one could venture out into the city in groups of fewer than six, one of whom had to be a noncommissioned officer, and it was a punishable offense for a soldier to be caught in the streets of Puebla alone and unarmed. One-fourth of each regiment had to remain under arms and on guard at all times. After the poison scare, special precautions had to be taken in the preparation of food, and the men were forbidden to eat anything except what their company cook prepared. In trying to enforce this regulation on the volunteers, who wished to maintain their customary habit of cooking and eating in small groups, the men refused to obey. Their messmates formed an important group for social interaction, and they did not like being told when and where to eat. After reading the order, one soldier called his commanding officer “an ignorant jackass.” Despite the regulations, soldiers often wandered off on their own to do as they pleased, and despite the precautions, Americans were frequent victims of attack and murder.33
American behavior ran the gamut as typical vices afflicted the army in Puebla, but generally they conducted themselves quite well. After about a month in the city, Lieutenant Kirkham wrote to his wife, “I cannot describe the amount of wickedness in the way of profanity, sabbath-breaking, intemperance, and gambling which is daily practiced. . . . Temptation in every form is being presented to the army.” The treatment of Mexican citizens was surprisingly good. Atrocities committed by Americans were the exception, not the rule, and when they did occur, they were often in retaliation for some Mexican deed. The arrival of Scott’s army generally brought a degree of order and security to townspeople rather than chaos and plunder. In fact, American troops did less looting than the Mexican soldiers had done when they passed through. Women freely mingled with the Americans in the streets, which indicated that they felt safe; however, many of them rejected romantic advances for fear of retribution after the occupiers departed. In sum, the pacification efforts made many of the Pueblans feel “more secure in their persons and property than they have ever been under their own authorities.”34
In addition to the effect of the pacification efforts in preventing a general uprising, another factor was the perception that Mexican citizens had of the guerrilla fighters. Many people saw them as nothing but “notorious Bandits” who are encouraged and “supported by the government.” D. H. Hill asserted that “the peaceable citizens of Mexico have long been satisfied that these robbers injure far more their own people than they do the North Americans and are strenuously opposed to the whole Guerrilleros System.” Another soldier claimed that Mexicans were frequently the victims of the numerous robberies and murders perpetrated by the guerrilla bands that roamed the roads. These sentiments were also indicative of the social and political conflict going on inside Mexico. Since the beginning of the war, there had been internal revolts, especially of the lower classes, against the ruling elites in Mexico, and Puebla had been a site of such upheavals.35 Consequently, some of the locals were unwilling to embrace the government’s efforts in 1847 to organize guerrilla units as a way of resisting the Americans. They might not like the foreigners in their midst, but Scott’s pacification efforts helped them to see the Americans as the lesser of two evils.
Punishment for disobedient soldiers was, by today’s standards, harsh in the extreme. One private thought that soldiers were “treated more like a vicious dog, than a civilized, intelligent, human being.” Among the traditional forms of punishment was a method referred to as “riding the horse,” wherein the soldier was made to straddle the narrow wooden beam of a sawhorse contraption for hours. It stood high enough that his legs could not touch the ground, and weights were tied to the ankles while hands were tied behind the back. It was a painful ride, and on occasion, men were known to fall over and break their necks. Beatings with a whip, carrying a cannonball or rock for an extended period of time, branding on the face or forehead, forfeiture of pay, confinement, and hard labor with ball and chain were other forms of punishment used, depending on the seriousness of the offense. Another common and painful method was to be “bucked and gagged.” Here the soldier was seated with knees drawn up to the chest, ankles tied, arms wrapped around the legs, and wrists tied in front. A pole or stick was passed under the knees. Then a large object like a tent peg was forced into the mouth and used as a gag. All of the joints, including the jawbone, sent searing pain through the body by being fixed in such a position for several hours at a time. Eventually the body would grow numb, and when the soldier was released, the movement of returning the arms, legs, and mouth to their normal positions would again cause excruciating pain.36
Officers could mete out most of these and other forms of punishment for the slightest offenses, and often did so with unreasonable capriciousness. General Twiggs once grabbed a man by the hair, pulling out a handful for the offense of buying a drink of whiskey. While in Puebla, Captain John H. Winder struck some soldiers with his sword because they refused to kneel as ordered when a Catholic procession passed. After two months in Puebla, a dozen volunteers refused to join the rest of General Quitman’s division for drill one day and also refused to clean their camp. Before the day was out, they were “bucked and set in a row in the guard house.” And while American soldiers were punished severely and sometimes arbitrarily, Pueblan offenders occasionally received unusual leniency as a way of placating the residents. “There are great complaints and very just ones among the men,” thought a Pennsylvania volunteer, because “Gen. Scott is watching with a paternal eye the interests of the Mexicans.” A soldier commented that more Americans had been executed in Mexico than would have been put to death in the entire United States in a
ten-year span.37
Such harsh punishment and discontent among the troops occasionally led to desertions—over two hundred while the army was in Jalapa. Before the Americans arrived in Puebla, a covert Mexican plan got underway to try to debilitate Scott’s army through desertions once it arrived in the city. Santa Anna and the Minister of Foreign Relations Manuel Baranda placed agents in Puebla with money and instructions to entice as many U.S. troops away from the army as possible. According to one account, “Baranda’s Puebla agents, sometimes friendly foreign nationals, sometimes lovely young women, did their part to spark desertions from May to August 1847, and so did the buck and gag and the rawhide lash.” William Austine of General Worth’s division wrote about “Recruiting depots” in the city where “rewards of every kind are promised” to American soldiers for changing their allegiance to the other side. Army officials in June arrested a German merchant in the city for trying to entice soldiers of German descent to desert. Martin Tritschler, tall and blond, was a naturalized Mexican citizen, an officer in the city’s National Guard, and a wounded veteran of the Battle of Cerro Gordo. He began handing out leaflets written in German as soon as the U.S. Army arrived. A court sentenced him to a firing squad, but for days after his conviction, local residents and the bishop of Puebla visited Scott to plead for his pardon. Many testified to Tritschler’s insanity, and on those grounds, Scott indeed pardoned and released him. After his release, however, some Americans thought he made an extraordinary recovery—as Austine reported, “We thought his madness had a method at least.” The overall results of the plan disappointed Mexican officials, but it did have some impact. Foreigners who had immigrated to the United States and had ended up joining the army tended to be singled out for harsh, sometimes tyrannical, treatment by their superiors and, not surprisingly, these persecuted individuals seemed more inclined to desert while the army was in Mexico. As Austine reported, the soldiers who deserted while in Puebla were “principally foreigners.” This, as shall be seen, would have dire consequences before the campaign ended.38
Punishment, low and erratic pay, disease, long marches, constant danger, foul weather, cramped quarters, and the countless other hardships that make up a soldier’s life caused some of the volunteers to rethink their decisions to enlist. They discovered that real army life was much different from the naive images of glory that induced many of them to join, and that gathering laurels in Mexico was not all it was cracked up to be. A South Carolina volunteer remembered “a Scene in a certain Court House when there was a perfect tempest raised against Mexico” by emotional speakers who harangued the crowd with challenges for brave young men to come forward. “But lo! of all the valient men who stired up the more quiet country-loving audience by loud declamation and invective—of those men of wind I have not seen one of them in Mexico. Nor do I know of one of their descendants—one honorable exception—representing them here.” Another man, later and from another area, similarly observed that “‘sodgering in Mexico’ is not quite so agreeable as Texas orators, who remain at home, would have the young, chivalrous & patriotic believe.”39
chapter eight
Puebla
Between the Devil and the Deep Sea
An army ought only to have one line of operations. This should be preserved with care, and never abandoned but in the last extremity. Every army that acts from a distant base and is not careful to keep this line perfectly open, marches upon a precipice.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
One of the frictions of war that can alter or destroy a general’s plan is the debilitating effect of disease, which began to take its toll during the army’s ten weeks in Puebla. On elevated and dry terrain, yellow fever was not the culprit; rather, it was dysentery. Caused from unclean water and unsanitary cooking and living conditions, or from eating fruit and vegetables contaminated by human feces, its chief symptoms were nausea, intestinal pain, fever, headache, and diarrhea. In severe cases, the diarrhea became chronic, dehydration occurred, and the body gradually withered away until the patient died. Kirby Smith described one of his friends who was suffering from the disease: he “looks like death and is wasted to a very skeleton.”1
That malady, along with others, began to have an impact by June and July, with over two thousand soldiers on the sick rolls in Puebla, Perote, Jalapa, and Veracruz. The South Carolinians were hit especially hard. “Our men are dying off very fast,” wrote one of them. Fourteen South Carolinians died of disease in the first half of June, and during July fifty-four died, eight in one day. According to George McClellan, the volunteers, who were notoriously negligent regarding personal hygiene and camp sanitation, died at a higher rate than the more disciplined regulars. “They literally die like dogs,” he wrote. Burial processions occurred daily. The deceased were usually buried in a $5 wooden coffin made of thin planks and painted black. Often at night Mexicans would return to the cemetery and dig up the bodies so that they could take the blanket that the corpse was wrapped in as well as the coffin. The bare body then dumped back into the grave was filled over with dirt. According to one report, stolen coffins were sometimes resold two and three times.2
The prospects of continuing the campaign were quickly becoming a numbers game. Disease, casualties, and the expiration of enlistments began to take a toll, putting Scott in an increasingly perilous situation. He was stuck in Puebla and could do nothing until more troops arrived. The War Department had been pushing for and the Congress had been working on legislation to raise new regiments since late 1846. In February 1847, the Ten Regiment Bill passed, and with it the opportunity for the administration to appoint new officers. It was in conjunction with these new troops and officer appointments that Polk had embarked on his failed effort to make Senator Thomas Hart Benton a lieutenant general. After delays and diversions of troops, new units, mostly company strength, began arriving in Veracruz in May and June, and as sizable numbers of men collected, they marched in stages into the interior of the country to reinforce the army at Puebla.
By the summer, however, bandits and irregulars swarmed the roads between Veracruz and Perote, making the passage particularly treacherous for the mostly inexperienced new soldiers. The guerrillas “take every advantage to anoy our sick . . . and also to plunder our trains that might be without sufficient guard,” wrote Hiram Yeager. The Americans viewed them as “cowardly [because] they never show themselves in the open.” In fact, many of the Americans viewed these quasi-military bands as a collection of brigands whose primary object was not military resistance but opportunistic thievery. As William Austine of Worth’s division wrote, “The whole country is infested with robbers, and hardly a vehicle escapes their hands.” It was in this atmosphere that Colonel James S. McIntosh marched out of Veracruz on June 4 with nearly 700 men, a long supply train of 130 wagons and 500 pack mules, and over a quarter of a million dollars in specie. Aware of the convoy’s value, guerrillas struck soon after it departed the coast, with three separate attacks coming on the sixth. McIntosh lost over twenty of his wagons, and his column suffered twenty-five casualties. Because he was unable to keep the ranks closed on his long and vulnerable column, he halted at Paso de Ovejas and called for help from Veracruz. So for several days the Americans sat in camp awaiting assistance. On numerous occasions, they spotted Mexican irregulars on the surrounding hilltops, who at least once rode toward the camp and fired a few shots before scampering away. McIntosh’s caution appeared to his men as confusion. “He does not appear to know what to do,” wrote surgeon Madison Mills.3
On the coast, George Cadwalader, a Philadelphia native and brigadier general of volunteers, was awaiting the arrival of the rest of his men. When he learned of the beleaguered condition of McIntosh’s troops, he immediately gathered the five hundred men on hand and rushed to give aid, arriving on the eleventh. That evening, the combined force reached the National Bridge around dusk and discovered that Mexicans had piled rocks in the road to block access to the bridge. With darkness approaching, and knowing that guerri
llas were in the area, the prudent course of action would have been to establish a secure campsite for the night. However, Cadwalader ordered the rocks cleared and the bridge crossed. It was near dark when the head of the column began to march onto the bridge, and as it reached the far side, some four hundred yards distant, guerrillas opened fire from the cliffs above on both the right and left. Some of the inexperienced drivers jumped off of their horses and let the wagon teams go, which caused havoc and disorder. Horses were killed and wagons turned over, clogging the road with wreckage. The bridge became a bottleneck of confusion as the raw recruits began to fire on each other. Thrown from his mount, Mills became “lodged between the wheel and body” of a wagon and was spared being crushed to death only because the wagon was stalled in the congestion.4
The ordeal on the bridge lasted longer than just a few minutes. Cadwalader ordered the debris removed from the road and the enemy cleared from the high ground to the right, but inexplicably, he left the Mexicans firmly ensconced in their fortified position to the left of the road. He then continued to push his men across. Ten Americans were killed and about thirty wounded in the fight. Afterward, Dr. Mills began to treat the wounded, and after removing American musket balls from several of them, he quickly surmised that friendly fire had claimed some of the victims. Cadwalader evidently thought that attempting to cross the bridge at night while under fire was brave and daring, but his subordinates disagreed. “His conduct . . . deserved to be punished,” wrote Mills in his diary. “He is not sustained by a single officer, except by Capt. [Joseph] Hooker, his Asst. Adj. Genl. who was probably his advisor in the matter.” The doctor harshly condemned Cadwalader as “pompous, overbearing[,]. . . . Ignorant and conceited. He is an ass.” In short, Mills believed that “the Gen. ought to be dammed for this affair,” which the embittered Mills believed resulted from “too much brandy.”5
A Gallant Little Army Page 20