19. Thomas L. Alexander Diary, BLY; Peskin, Volunteers, 80; Ethan Allen Hitchcock, “Sketches of the Campaign,” Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, USMA; A. P. Hill quoted in James I. Robertson Jr., General A. P. Hill: The Story of a Confederate Warrior (New York: Random House, 1987), 18; Madison Mills Diary, FHS; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 57–61; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885), 1:123–24.
20. Gustavus Woodson Smith, Company “A” Corps of Engineers, USA, 1846–1848, in the Mexican War, ed. Leonne M. Hudson (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001), 1–18.
21. Lee to Mary, Feb. 22, 1847, Lee Family Papers, VHS; H. J. Moore Mexican War Diary, BLY; Maury, Recollections, 29–30; Mills Diary, FHS.
22. Anderson to wife, Mar. 12, 1847, Robert Anderson Papers, LC: Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 73.
23. Moses Barnard Reminiscences, BLY.
24. John Sedgwick, Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major-General, comp. Henry D. Sedgwick, 2 vols. (DeVinne Press, 1902), 1:72; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 73–74; Lee to Mary, Mar. 13, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers; McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 54; Smith to wife, Mar. 13, 1847, in Smith, To Mexico with Scott, 114–15.
25. Hitchcock, “Sketches,” Hitchcock Papers.
26. Navy Department, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, 8 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Naval History Center, 1991), 6:585; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 74; Ripley to mother, Mar. 16, 1847, Roswell Ripley Papers, BLY; Winslow Sanderson to wife, Mar. 31, 1847, Winslow Fuller Sanderson Papers, BLY.
27. Davis, Autobiography, 279; William Campbell to David Campbell, Mar. 28, 1847, in William Bowen Campbell, Mexican War Letters of Col. William Bowen Campbell of Tennessee, Written to Governor David Campbell of Virginia, 1846–1847, ed. St. George L. Sioussat (reprinted from Tennessee Historical Magazine, Jun. 1915), 161.
28. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 74–75; Unknown, “Campaigns in Mexico,” BLY; Patterson to Scott, Mar. 14, 1847, LR, AGO, RG 94, NA; Wiley Hale to mother, Feb. 18, 1847, Wiley Pope Hale Papers, TSLA. Hale obviously dated his letter Feb. 18 by mistake; it should have been March.
29. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 74–75; Grant, Personal Memoirs, 1:126; Bauer, Mexican War, 246; Peskin, Volunteers, 45.
30. John Edwards Weems, To Conquer a Peace: The War between the United States and Mexico (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1974), 331; Moore, Scott’s Campaign, 12.
31. Scott, Memoirs, 2:223–24; Bauer, Mexican War, 245–46; Marcy to Scott, Dec. 22, 1847, United States War Department Letters, BLY.
32. Hitchcock, “Sketches,” Hitchcock Papers; William Walker to wife, Mar. 13, 1847, William Walker Papers, Duke University; Weems, To Conquer a Peace, 332.
33. Peskin, Volunteers, 47–48. Private George W. Hartman said that it was the railroad that ran parallel to and near to the Alvarado Road, where Pillow had so dangerously positioned his men. Perhaps he did this in both places. See George W. Hartman, A Private’s Own Journal: Giving an Account of the Battles in Mexico, under Gen’l Scott (Greencastle: E. Robinson, 1849), 7.
34. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 76–77.
35. E. Kirby Smith, who wrote that he had seen Alburtis’s body, also mentioned walking past as the doctors amputated Miller’s leg. See his letter quoted in Arthur Howard Noll, General Kirby-Smith (Sewanee, Tenn.: University Press at the University of the South, 1907), 49. Although he no doubt saw comrades attending to their wounded friend, Smith was mistaken about the loss of the leg, as are other accounts of this episode. Captain Winslow Sanderson, a member of the same unit, was present when Miller was wounded; in fact, he killed two of the enemy officers in the skirmish. In two letters to his wife, Mar. 31 and May 2, Sanderson reported “Miller will save his leg.” See Sanderson Papers.
36. Bauer, Mexican War, 246; Uncapher Diary; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 2 vols. (1903; Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1994), 1:155; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 76–77; Lee to Mary, Mar. 13, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers; Uncapher Diary.
37. Lee to Mary, Mar. 13, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers; McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 56–57; Unknown, “Campaigns in Mexico,” BLY.
38. Bauer, Mexican War, 246; quote from Lee to Mary, Mar. 13, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers; Robert Anderson, An Artillery Officer in the Mexican War, 1846–7 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911), 79; Judge Zo. S. Cook, “Mexican War Reminiscences,” Alabama Historical Quarterly 19 (fall–winter 1957): 441–42; Temple, “Memoir,” 64; Scott to Marcy, Mar. 14, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Joseph Rowe Smith Diary, Joseph Rowe Smith Papers, BLY.
39. McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 58.
40. Noll, General Kirby-Smith, 49–50; Twiggs to Scott, Mar. 15, 1847, LR, AGO, RG 94, NA; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 76, 79.
41. Scott to Marcy, Mar. 21, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Bill, Rehearsal, 213.
Chapter 2. Veracruz: The Slow, Scientific Process
1. William Campbell to David Campbell, Mar. 20, 1847, in William Bowen Campbell, Mexican War Letters of Col. William Bowen Campbell of Tennessee, Written to Governor David Campbell of Virginia, 1846–1847, ed. St. George L. Sioussat (reprinted from Tennessee Historical Magazine, Jun. 1915), 159.
2. Scott to Marcy, Mar. 12, 14, and 21, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Meade to wife, Feb. 24, 1847, in George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 1:184.
3. General Orders No. 53, Mar. 13, 1847, Justin H. Smith Collection, LAC, UT; Joseph Rowe Smith, “Diary,” Joseph Rowe Smith Papers, BLY.
4. P. G. T. Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico: The Mexican War Reminiscences of P. G. T. Beauregard, ed. T. Harry Williams (New York: DaCapo Press, 1969), 26–27.
5. Scott to Marcy, Mar. 18, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Justin H. Smith, The War with Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 2:28; Hazard Stevens, The Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, 2 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), 1:113; Bradford to Carry, Mar. 27, 1847, Edmund Bradford Papers, BLY; William Montgomery Gardner, The Siege of Vera Cruz, photocopy from Gardner’s published memoirs, William Montgomery Gardner Papers, SHC, UNC; George B. McClellan, The Mexican War Diary of General George B. McClellan Diary, ed. William Stan Myers (New York: DaCapo Press, 1972), 62–63.
6. Daniel Harvey Hill, A Fighter from Way Back: The Mexican War Diary of Lt. Daniel Harvey Hill, 4th Artillery, USA, ed. Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Timothy D. Johnson (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2002), 200–201, quotes found on 80, 86–87.
7. Gustavus Woodson Smith, Company “A” Corps of Engineers, USA, 1846–1848, in the Mexican War, ed. Leonne M. Hudson (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001), 22; McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 62–63; Hiram B. Yeager to John C. Yeager, Mar. 20, 1847, Hiram Yeager Papers, DRTL; General Orders No 33, Feb. 25, 1847, Justin H. Smith Collection. So meticulous were Scott’s orders that he instructed the work parties to take their muskets with them “loaded and with bayonets fixed.” He ordered that they leave cartridge boxes and other equipment in camp but carry two or three extra rounds in their pockets. They were not to stack their muskets, but each man was to place the weapon “three paces behind his work.”
8. Unknown, “Campaigns in Mexico,” 39, BLY; Sedgwick to father, Apr. 2, 1847, in John Sedgwick, Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major-General, comp. Henry D. Sedgwick, 2 vols. (DeVinne Press, 1902), 1:75; Robert Anderson to wife, Mar. 12, 1847, Robert Anderson Papers, LC; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 82; Smith to wife, Mar. 17, 1847, E. Kirby Smith, To Mexico with Scott: Letters of Captain E. Kirby Smith to His Wife, ed. Emma Jerome Blackwood (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1917), 120.
9. Scott to Conner, Mar. 18, 1847, David Conner Papers, LC; Scott to Marcy, Mar. 25, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; William Austine to cousin, Apr. 1, 1847, William Austine Papers, SHC, UNC; Bradford to Carry, Mar. 27, 1847, Bradford Papers; Robert Anderson, An Artillery Officer in the Mexican War, 1846–7 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 19
11), 87.
10. Pedro Santoni, Mexicans at Arms: Puro Federalists and the Politics of War, 1845–1848 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996), 163, 173–74, 180–87, 190–91; Edward H. Moseley, “The Religious Impact of the American Occupation of Mexico City, 1847–1848,” in Militarists, Merchants, and Missionaries: United States Expansion in Middle America, ed. Eugene R. Huck and Edward H. Moseley (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1970), 45; William A. DePalo Jr., The Mexican National Army, 1822–1852 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 115.
11. Scott to Marcy, Mar. 21, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 63; Richard Bruce Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 10; Anderson to wife, Feb. 14, 1847, in Artillery Officer, 43.
12. K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1974; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 247; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 83, 86; S. R. Anderson to A. R. Wynne and George Crockett, Mar. 18, 1847, Wynne Family Papers, TSLA.
13. William Higgins to uncle, Jan. 4, 1848, William Higgins Papers, BLY; Allan Peskin, ed., Volunteers: The Mexican War Journals of Private Richard Coulter and Sergeant Thomas Barclay, Company E, Second Pennsylvania Infantry (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991), 49; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 75; John Hammond Moore, ed., “Private Johnson Fights the Mexicans, 1847–1848,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 67 (Oct. 1966): 207; Thomas Claiborne, “Reminiscences of the Mexican War,” 15, Thomas Claiborne Papers, SHC, UNC.
14. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 80–81, 83.
15. Anderson, Artillery Officer, 87–88; Scott to Marcy, Mar. 21, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; K. Jack Bauer, Surf boats and Horse Marines: U.S. Naval Operations in the Mexican War, 1846–48 (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1969), 86–88.
16. Alfred Hoyt Bill, Rehearsal for Conflict: The War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 214; Raphael Semmes, Service Afloat and Ashore during the Mexican War (Cincinnati: Wm. H. Moore, 1851), 133, 135; William G. Temple, “Memoir,” in Philip Syng Physick Conner, The Home Squadron under Commodore Connor in the War with Mexico (Philadelphia: Philip Syng Physick Conner, 1896), 69; Chauncey Forward Sargent, Gathering Laurels in Mexico: The Diary of an American Soldier in the Mexican American War, ed. Ann Brown Janes (Lincoln, Mass.: Cottage Press, 1990), 7; Moore, “Private Johnson,” 208.
17. Thomas D. Tennery, The Mexican War Diary of Thomas D. Tennery, ed. D. E. Livingston-Little (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 73; Bauer, Surf boats, 90–91; Anderson, Artillery Officer, 88.
18. Roswell Ripley to mother, Mar. 16, 1847, Roswell Ripley Papers, BLY; Hiram Yeager to John Yeager, Mar. 20, 1847, Yeager Papers; Scott to Morales and Morales to Scott, Mar. 22, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA.
19. Timothy D. Johnson, Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 12–13; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 2 vols. (1903; Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1994), 1:189.
20. Bankhead to Scott, Mar. 24, 1847, LR, AGO, RG 94, NA; Bauer, Surf boats, 89; Navy Department, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, 8 vols. (Washington: Naval History Center, 1991), 5:585; Smith to wife, Mar. 24, 1847, Smith, To Mexico with Scott, 123.
21. Stevens Thomson Mason to ?, Mar. 23, 1847, Daniel Family Papers, VHS; McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 67–69; Smith to wife, Mar. 24, 1847, Smith, To Mexico with Scott, 123; Yeager to Yeager, Mar. 27, 1847, Yeager Papers.
22. Moore, “Private Johnson,” 209; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 86; Bill, Rehearsal, 223.
23. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 86; Sargent, Gathering Laurels, 7; Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, 2 vols. (1864; Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 2:426.
24. Yeager to Yeager, Mar. 27, 1847, Yeager Papers. Captain Robert Anderson described the most likely scenario resulting in Vinton’s death in Artillery Officer, 91. See also Bankhead to Scott, Mar. 24, 1847, LR, AGO, RG 94, NA; Charles Judah and George Winston Smith, Chronicles of the Gringoes: The U.S. Army in the Mexican War, 1846–1848, Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Combatants (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968), 175–76, n. 25, 484; Scott, Memoirs, 2:429; Bradford to Carry, Mar. 27, 1847, Bradford Papers; Smith to wife, Mar. 24, 1847, Smith, To Mexico with Scott, 124; Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, Monterrey Is Ours! The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Dana, 1845–1847, ed. Robert H. Ferrell (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), 193; Arthur Howard Noll, General Kirby-Smith (Sewanee, Tenn.: University Press at the University of the South, 1907), 51–52.
25. Smith to wife, Mar. 24, 1847, Smith, To Mexico with Scott, 124–25; Bankhead to Scott, Mar. 24, 1847, and Scott to Marcy, Mar. 24, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Roy P. Stonesifer, The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 54.
26. It was probably Lieutenant Benjamin Roberts of the Mounted Rifles, who would later be a veteran of Civil War battles at Cedar Mountain and Bull Run.
27. Unknown, “Campaigns in Mexico,” BLY.
28. Semmes, Service, 135; Bauer, Surfboats, 93; Smith, Company “A,” 23; Yeager to Yeager, Mar. 24, 1847, Yeager Papers; Bauer, Mexican War, 250; Bankhead to Scott, Mar. 24, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico, 29–30.
29. Smith, Company “A,” 23–24.
30. Hachaliah Brown to Lemuel Brown, Apr. 6, 1847, Lemuel C. Brown Papers, BLY; Bauer, Mexican War, 250; Paul D. Olejar, “Rockets in Early American Wars,” Military Affairs 10 (winter 1946): 17–18, 21–24, 27.
31. William Walker to wife, Mar. 25, 1847, William Henry Talbot Walker Papers, Duke University; Theodore Laidley, Surrounded by Dangers of All Kinds: The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Theodore Laidley, ed. James M. McCaffrey (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1997), 50; Bradford to Carry, Apr. 2, 1847, Bradford Papers; E. Kirby Smith to General Joseph W. Brown, May 27, 1847, E. Kirby Smith Papers, BLY.
32. James I. Robertson Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (New York: Macmillan, 1997), 52–54.
33. Scott to Marcy, Mar. 25, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 87.
34. See Irvin W. Levinson, Wars within War: Mexican Guerrillas, Domestic Elites, and the United States of America, 1846–1848 (Forth Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2005), 29–30, for a critical assessment of Scott’s refusal to stop the bombardment. For support, he cites Scott, Memoirs, 2:421, 427. Jose C. Valades called Scott “cruel” in his “punishment” of the citizens of Veracruz in Breve Historia de la Guerra con los Estados Unidos (Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, 1947), 167. Levinson also referenced Scott’s role as the commanding officer overseeing the removal of the Cherokee Indians as if to add weight to the assertion that Scott was callous toward civilians. It is a curious reference given Scott’s dislike for that duty, which President Martin Van Buren ordered him to fulfill, and considering that he issued orders to the troops involved in the removal to show all “possible kindness” to the Cherokee. His order, dated May 17, 1838, and reprinted in his memoirs, went on to say that if “in the ranks, a despicable individual should be found capable of inflicting a wanton injury or insult on any Cherokee man, woman, or child, it is hereby made the special duty of the nearest good officer or man instantly to interpose, and to seize and consign the guilty wretch to the severest penalty of the laws.” This unpleasant and deadly affair came to be known as the Trail of Tears, but the fault cannot be laid at Scott’s feet. See his Memoirs, 1:320.
35. Meade to wife, Mar. 25, 1847, Life and Letters, 1:192–93; Ethan Allen Hitchcock, “Sketches of the Campaign,” Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, USMA; William Campbell to David Campbell, Feb. 19, 1847, Campbell, Mexican War Letters, 153; Scott, Memoirs, 2:424.
36. Bankhead to Scott, Mar. 24, 1847, and Scott to Marcy, Mar. 25, 1847, and Perry to Scott, Mar. 25, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Scott to Stribling, M
ar. 25, 1847, Dreer Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Bauer, Surf boats, 95.
37. Hachaliah Brown to Lemuel Brown, Apr. 6, 1847, Brown Papers; J. Frost, The Mexican War and Its Warriors (New Haven, Conn.: H. Mansfield, 1850), 137–38; George C. Furber, The Twelve Months Volunteers; or, Journal of a Private, in the Tennessee Regiment of Cavalry, in the Campaign Mexico, 1846–7 (Cincinnati: J. A. & U. P. James, 1848), 541–43; Christopher T. Losson, Tennessee’s Forgotten Warriors: Frank Cheatham and His Confederate Division (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 15–16; Bauer, Mexican War, 251; Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 60.
38. Hitchcock to Lizzie, Mar. 27, 1847, Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, LC; Albert C. Ramsey, ed. and trans., The Other Side; or, Notes for the History of the War between Mexico and the United States (New York: John Wiley, 1850), 186; Bill, Rehearsal, 216; Judah and Smith, Chronicles, 193; Dana, Monterrey Is Ours!, 196–97; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 93–94; Austine to cousin, Apr. 1, 1847, Austine Papers; Anderson, Artillery Officer, 104; Smith, War with Mexico, 2:32.
39. Lee to Custis Lee, Apr. 11, 1847, Lee Family Papers, VHS; Smith, War with Mexico, 2:32–33. In a twist of irony, fifteen years later, it would be Pillow as one of the ranking generals at the besieged Fort Donelson who handed command over to a subordinate in order to avoid the odious task of surrendering to Ulysses S. Grant.
40. Anderson, Artillery Officer, 98; Bauer, Mexican War, 251–52; DePalo, Mexican National Army, 119.
41. Judah and Smith, Chronicles, 194; Scott, Memoirs, 2:429; Bauer, Surf boats, 97; Smith, War with Mexico, 2:34, n. 28, 341; Bauer, Mexican War, 252; Ramsey, Other Side, 195; Lee quoted in Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 123. Casualty figures from José María Roa Barcena, Recuerdos de la Invasion Norteamericana: 1846–1848 (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1993), are given in Levinson, Wars within War, 29.
42. Thomas Williams to father, Mar. 25, 1847, Williams Letters, Justin H. Smith Collection, LAC, UT.
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