Scott, meanwhile, had put on his splendid uniform, left his headquarters before daylight, and ridden with his staff north to the San Cosme garita. He entered the city and met General Worth at the Alameda at about 6:00 A.M. Then, in keeping with Scott’s penchant for flair, the troops were organized into a procession for the general’s formal entry into the city. Harney’s dragoons led the way, followed by the commanding general and his staff, with Worth’s infantry bringing up the rear. “A brilliant cavalcade,” one soldier called it. Historian Douglas Southall Freeman wrote that “Napoleon himself could not have set the stage more theatrically.” Lieutenant D. H. Hill marched into the city in Worth’s column, and he recorded that the “houses were all open and the balconies crowded. The people gazed at us as at wild animals,” but Hill detected no signs of “enmity.” Quitman was expecting Scott, and he had his men at attention in the plaza when the clatter of many hoofs announced the commanding general’s arrival. Scott entered the plaza at the northwest corner, and Quitman’s men lined the western side of the square facing east. Harney’s musicians played “Yankee Doodle” as Scott’s bay slowly cantered along the front of Quitman’s lines. When he saw the flag of the Mounted Rifles, he reportedly uttered what would become the regimental motto: “Brave Rifles! Veterans! You have been baptized in fire and blood and have come out steel.” As he reached a point opposite the National Palace, he turned left and rode over to the magnificent facade. In front of the palace, Scott dismounted, named Quitman the civil and military governor of the city, and walked into the Halls of the Montezumas.25
General Winfield Scott and staff entering the plaza of Mexico City on the morning of September 14, 1847. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
It was 8:00 A.M. when Scott rode into the grand plaza, exactly twenty-four hours after the beginning of the assault on Chapultepec. His presence in the heart of the enemy capital marked the end of a brilliant six-month campaign and crowned his career with remarkable achievement. It was, however, a bloody twenty-four hours. American killed numbered 130, and adding the 703 wounded and 29 missing, losses totaled 862. Mexican losses totaled about 3,000, with over 800 of that number being captured. Since marching into the Valley of Mexico, the American army had suffered 2,703 casualties, 383 of them deaths, in what had essentially been four days of fighting.26
Taking possession of the city brought on a few spasms of residual resistance. As the men dispersed from the plaza, they received fire from several rooftops and windows. After surviving all the battles of the campaign, John Garland was the first wounded when a musket ball hit him in the thigh. Others were wounded, some mortally. Thus began three days of sporadic street fighting perpetrated by a coalition of deserters from the Mexican army, looters, and many of the estimated 30,000 convicts that the city’s priests had released from jails and prisons. Some of the fighting was simply the typical manifestations of lawless thuggery that occurs in the absence of authority. Indeed, as Quitman reported, when his men marched into the plaza that morning, the “palace [was] already crowded with Mexican thieves and robbers” and had to be cleared by a battalion of marines. In other areas of the city, looting had already given rise to chaos. However, there were hundreds of Mexicans engaged in the shooting, and the clergy, who had instructed the placement of many of the Mexican snipers and opened the church towers to them, orchestrated much of the uprising. An emboldened citizenry, many of whom took heart in the renegade actions of the deserters and convicts, joined in the resistance as crowds of angry residents took to the streets to threaten the foreign occupiers. All classes of Mexican men and women participated in the opposition. Their weapons were not only muskets but also paving stones thrown from upper stories.27
To restore order and quell the resistance, Scott resorted to harsh tactics, or as Quitman called it, “rigorous measures.” He sent a message to the mayor threatening to “sack the city” if the shooting continued, to which the mayor responded, “This is all the work of those cursed friars!” Scott also authorized his artillery to open fire on any house from which sniper fire originated, and once the offending house was battered by cannon, it was ransacked by infantry. According to Hill, it was “adopted as a rule to rifle every house from which there came a shot and to kill every armed Mexican found in the streets.” The Americans also fired into the angry crowds to clear the streets. As Hachaliah Brown wrote to his family: “I have the death of about 150 poor wretches on my conscience, having been compelled to fire on a large mob assembled in one of [the] streets where my 24 pound howitzer was planted.” Robert E. Lee characterized the Mexican sniping as annoying and called their shots “desultory” or erratic, but he contended that “after killing some 500 of the mob & deserters . . . who had not courage to fight us lawfully, the thing was put a stop to.” In the process, however, some of the U.S. troops interpreted Scott’s stern recourse as “unbridled license” to do as they pleased, and they did. Tuesday, September 14, turned into a shameful display of uncontrolled marauding. Hill became outraged at the actions of some of the men. “Many of them were perfectly frantic with the lust of blood and plunder. In order to sack rich houses many soldiers pretended that they heard firing from them.” In several cases, they threw men from housetops and shot women who handed loaded guns to those in the streets. And “in some instances,” recalled Brown, “bullets passed thro Reverand gowns.” For Hill, it was “a day of bloodshed and brutality such as I trust never to see again,” and he believed that “its horrors will never be forgotten in Mexico.”28 It has not.
That night, sharpshooters and riflemen took positions in church belfries, in domes, and on rooftops, and the next day, they reportedly killed about fifty armed Mexicans who showed themselves. On September 15 and 16, order gradually returned.29 The capital remained a dangerous place for isolated or wayward soldiers, and the army took the usual measures of caution consistent with the occupation of hostile territory. As soldiers settled into their new duties, the army began what turned out to be a protracted occupation of central Mexico while they waited for the slow wheels of peace to turn. Conquering a peace, however, took longer than Scott anticipated with the Mexicans—and proved to be altogether impossible within his own army.
chapter fourteen
The Preoccupations of the Occupation
Strange and almost incredible seems our victory. . . . History will no doubt speak of our achievement as more glorious than that of Cortes. I am truly thankful that I took part in the most glorious battles. . . . Strange is our position at present. We are in the enemy’s Capital and yet all communication with our front and rear is cut off so that we may almost be said to be besieged in the very center of the Mexican power.
—Daniel Harvey Hill, Fourth Artillery
Gideon Pillow called the Battle of Chapultepec “one of the most brilliant fields known to the American Arms.” Hachaliah Brown said that “Chapultepec was a brilliant ‘coup de main’ the prettiest affair of the campaign.” George Kendall had difficulty believing that the small army had actually made it to Mexico City. It “seems like a dream. . . . Yet here in Mexico we are, & masters.” “Strange and almost incredible seems our victory,” thought Daniel Harvey Hill when he considered that a Mexican army 17,000 strong gave up its capital to a force of 7,000. However, maintaining the tranquility of a city with a population of almost 200,000 would prove more challenging. Scott established martial law and took the unusual step of levying a $150,000 contribution on the city to defray the occupation costs. While the commanding general resurrected the elements of his pacification plan—strict discipline, payment for food and supplies, and respect for religious and property rights—Quitman, as military governor, reinstated the city’s civil authorities, who helped restore order among the populace. Excepting the occasional abuses perpetrated by the worst elements of the army, behavior improved markedly as discipline was reasserted after the outrages of September 14. Within days, stores reopened and business returned to a semblance of normality.1
Having failed at the outset
of the occupation to arouse a general uprising against the Americans, the priests tried again on the first Sunday, September 19, to create ill will among the citizenry. They intended to keep all of the churches closed in the hopes of arousing the “fanatical prejudices” of the masses against the army. That morning, Quitman noticed that no church bells were ringing to signal the coming of Sunday mass, and he and Lieutenant George Davis went to consult with Scott. An American flag flew over every church in the city to signify the army’s protection and the guarantee of religious freedom, but the priests hoped that by keeping the churches closed, the populace would assume that the Americans were responsible and that the flags represented a war against Catholicism. Quickly surmising the priests’ intentions, Quitman ordered the clergy to immediately open their churches and ring their bells or else both protection and flags would be removed. The threat worked, and another attempt to turn the people against the Americans failed.2
In the early days of the occupation, caring for the wounded was a top priority. Scott ordered that those wounded in previous battles and left in Tacubaya be brought to the capital. Those too seriously injured to ride in shaky wagons were carried the four miles on litters, “hard work but cheerfully performed.” General James Shields, who received an arm wound in the assault on the castle, did not leave the field to seek medical attention until that night after the fight at the gate. But he made the triumphant entry into the city the next morning with the rest of the army, although he did so in a carriage. Doctors dressed James Longstreet’s thigh wound, but it healed slowly. One unfortunate soldier, shot in the head on the morning of September 13, received no medical attention because doctors assumed his wound was fatal. It was, but the poor man lingered in agony for five days before dying. Barna Upton of the Third Infantry regretted joining the army, and in a letter to his family, he admitted that he had “learned a lesson that will prevent me from roving about as I have done.” Upton languished for a month after receiving a wound on September 13. He died on October 15, but his family did not learn of his fate until seven months later, when they received a letter from one of Upton’s friends. Having served with Upton on every battlefield from Palo Alto on the Rio Grande to Mexico City, William Fogg assured the family that “a better soldier never served his country or died for it.” Robert E. Lee remembered with remorse the deaths of Simon Drum and Calvin Benjamin, “noble fellows” who fought “like lions” and were both killed at the Belén gate. In a letter, Lee, after serious expressions of sorrow, flippantly quipped that his friend “Joe Johnston is fat ruddy & hearty. I think a little lead, properly taken is good for a man,” referring to Johnston’s full recovery from his Cerro Gordo wounds. He went on to assure his correspondent, “I am truly thankful however that I escaped all internal doses.”3
Soldiers continued to die from wounds received at Churubusco and Molino del Rey, and coupled with the injured from the most recent fighting, the hospitals contained more than two thousand men. Units were depleted. Lieutenant John Sedgwick of the Second Artillery left Puebla with fifty-four men in his company and entered the capital with twenty-seven. After the capture of Mexico City, many officers applied for leave to go home, but the army’s officer ranks had become so depleted by casualties that Scott denied all requests for leave, logically concluding that he could not spare the good officers and he would not reward the bad ones. Lieutenant Ralph Kirkham wrote his wife informing her not to expect him home any time soon, because Scott would not even grant leaves to wounded officers unless they had a doctor’s certificate. A few days after the fall of the capital, Kirkham went to a hospital to visit Colonel James McIntosh and Lieutenant Rudolph Ernst, both destined to die of wounds received at Molino del Rey. He later reported to his wife, “I could not bear the sight of the wounded. . . . No one but an eyewitness can imagine the sight of a hospital after an action.” He went on to describe “trunks without limbs” and people with such mangled bodies that they were unrecognizable, yet they continued to live. Kirkham, a New England Episcopalian, did what most men of faith do under such trying circumstances. His journal contains his expression of thanks to “my Heavenly Father for having brought me unharmed out of this terrible battle” and a renewed commitment to live a worthy life: “May I by my future conduct express my thankfulness more than I can by words.”4
Others died during the occupation even though they had escaped injury in battle. William Adee, Third Infantry, wrote to his father in October informing him that he had been sick with diarrhea but was optimistic about his recovery. He gave his family no indication that his illness was serious; however, he had promised in an earlier letter to “provide the means to Inform you” if anything happened to him. Sergeant Charles F. McBride turned out to be the means by which Samuel Adee learned of his son’s death. Writing “to offer a stranger’s condolence,” McBride informed the family that William had contracted dysentery in Veracruz in the spring and never recovered. He had participated in battles, even the fighting around Mexico City, but “he whom death had shunned on the field of battle . . . was reserved to die in his bed, the victim of a protracted and painful disease.” He died on October 30, two weeks after his last letter home. Along with a lock of the son’s hair, McBride sent the father assurances that William had “died as he lived, a man.”5
After a slow convalescence in the hospital, Longstreet was fortunate to be moved to the home of the wealthy Escandones family. In general, however, Americans, healthy or infirm, were forbidden to stay in private homes. Most units were housed in public buildings. The Pennsylvanians found quarters in a university, then in a large warehouse. Part of Twiggs’s division was housed in a building that had been used by the Mexican army. Members of D. H. Hill’s unit quickly became displeased with their accommodations in the National Palace, which Hill referred to as the “filthiest place I have ever seen” and an “immense pile.” He and his companions were dismayed at the degree of filth in the city. Hachaliah Brown was among the few lucky soldiers who gained permission to stay in a private residence, and he wrote a letter home bragging of the luxuries he enjoyed. “I wash in porcelain & urinate in a silver pot-d-chamber.”6
As the men settled into their lodgings, Scott contemplated his next move. Not knowing how long it would take to secure a treaty and understanding the need to spread out the cost of the occupation, he proposed seizing other cities in central Mexico. That, however, would take more troops, which were, in fact, already en route from Veracruz. As he had been promising for months, Secretary of War William L. Marcy continued to search for additional troops to augment Scott’s numbers, and the administration increased its efforts when President Polk learned that Scott had voluntarily cut his own supply lines. The president understood that the army’s isolated situation in the interior of Mexico was critical, and he was anxious that communication with the coast be restored. To that end, he sent all available men to Veracruz, either from new, untrained regiments being raised in the States or from veteran volunteer units borrowed from Taylor’s army. They arrived in Veracruz piecemeal and wholly unprepared for combat, and commanders assembled them into columns as quickly as possible and rushed them forward. Indeed, as Scott’s army marched into Mexico City, one column had already left Veracruz, marching west as troops continued to arrive on the coast.
Among the new troops traveling to Mexico in late summer was a member of the 1847 West Point class named Ambrose Powell (A. P.) Hill. The twenty-one-year-old Virginian was getting to Mexico a year late. He had entered the academy in 1842, but during the summer furlough after his second year, probably while in New York City, he had contracted gonorrhea. The effects of the disease incapacitated him that fall and winter to the point that he had to repeat his third year at the academy. Consequently, when his former roommate, George McClellan, and the rest of his original classmates graduated in 1846 and headed for the theater of war, Hill still had a year of school to complete. His health improved and he finished fifteenth in his class before receiving orders to report to the First Artillery
Regiment in Mexico. His gonorrhea was never cured, and its painful effects continued to reappear over the years until it became chronic and debilitating. Eventually it was not the disease that killed him but the musket ball of a Union corporal near Petersburg, Virginia, in 1865, where Hill was serving as a lieutenant general in the Confederate army. But in 1847, the young lieutenant traveled to Mexico with high hopes. He left New Orleans on a steamer that collided with another vessel on the first day out, forcing it to return to the city for two days of repair work. On the way to Veracruz, Hill was fascinated at his first sight of flying fish. He was equally impressed with the “extreme beauty of the panorama” when he arrived at the port city, but he quickly formed a negative opinion of its inhabitants.7
A Gallant Little Army Page 35