A Gallant Little Army

by Timothy D Johnson

  5. Smith, War, 2:53; Hiram B. Yeager to John C. Yeager (brother), Apr. 20, 1847, Hiram B. Yeager Papers, DRTL; K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1974; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 265; Hiram Wingate to William English, Apr. 27, 1847, Hiram Wingate Papers, FHS; see also Barna Upton to brother Elias, May 16, 1847, Barna N. Upton Papers, BLY; Smith to Brown, May 27, 1847, Joseph Rowe Smith Papers, BLY.

  6. Thomas Claiborne, “Reminiscences of the Mexican War,” 20–21, Thomas Claiborne Papers, SHC, UNC; Smith, Company “A,” 33; George Rollie Adams, General William S. Harney: Prince of Dragoons (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 100.

  7. Smith, Company “A,” 33–34; Smith, War, 2; 54; Harney’s battle report, Apr. 21, 1847, Senate Doc. No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Exec.

  8. Smith, War, 2:53; Riley’s battle report, Apr. 20, 1847, Senate. Doc. No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Exec.

  9. Smith, Company “A,” 33; Richard Ewell to mother, Apr. 22, 1847, Richard S. Ewell Papers, VHS. Tom recounted his experience to brother Richard later in the day before he died of his wound. Robert G. Hartje, Van Dorn: The Life and Times of a Confederate General (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967), 37.

  10. Barna Upton to brother Elias, May 16, 1847, Upton Papers; John Sedgwick, Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major-General, comp. Henry D. Sedgwick, 2 vols. (DeVinne Press, 1902), 1:90.

  11. 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), 209–10; Claiborne, “Reminiscences,” 22, Claiborne Papers. In Vasquez’s honor, a stone marker would be erected about halfway up the southwest slope of El Telégrafo. It is still there today.

  12. Thomas Jackson Arnold, Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1916), 93; Paul D. Casdorph, Prince John Magruder: His Life and Campaigns (New York: John Wiley, 1996), 68; Upton to brother Elias, May 16, 1847, Upton Papers. Most accounts imply that the enemy guns that Magruder turned on the fleeing Mexican soldiers were on top of El Telégrafo, but it is possible that the Mexican battery in question was near the road on the west side of the hill. The Mexican account of the battle, in Ramsey, Other Side, 212, referred to this battery as the one turned on the fleeing Mexican soldiers.

  13. Thomas D. Tennery, The Mexican War Diary of Thomas D. Tennery, ed. D. E. Livingston-Little (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 82; George Turnbull Moore Davis, Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo T. M. Davis, Captain and Aid-de-Camp Scott’s Army of Invasion (New York: Jenkins and McCowan, 1891), 151; Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (1934; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), 1:245.

  14. John S. D. Eisenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (1989; New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1990), 283.

  15. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 70–71; B. G. Ellis, The Moving Appeal: Mr. McClanahan, Mrs. Dill, and the Civil War’s Great Newspaper Run (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2003), 64; 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), 69; Ripley to mother, Apr. 23, 1847, and Ripley to sister, May 2, 1847, Roswell Ripley Papers, BLY. Lieutenant Theodore Laidley assisted in firing the howitzer, and he reported that they fired eight rounds in the brief clash.

  16. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 70–71; Bauer, Mexican War, 267.

  17. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 71.

  18. Gideon Pillow Supplemental Report, Apr. 29, 1847, Campbell Papers; 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), 78; Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 71; Tipton Journal, TSLA.

  19. Israel Uncapher Mexican War Diary, UTA; George W. Hartman, A Private’s Own Journal: Giving an Account of the Battles in Mexico, under Gen’l Scott (Greencastle: E. Robinson, 1849), 11; Ellis, Moving Appeal, 64; Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 72. Pillow’s version of the events indicated that two of his regiments were in position when the shooting started. “I had myself placed Col. Haskell’s regiment in position for the assault [and] . . . had placed Col. Robert’s regiment (the supporting force of Haskell’s regiment) in position a short distance in the rear.” See his Supplemental Report, Campbell Papers.

  20. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 72; McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 85–86.

  21. Peskin, Volunteers, 78; N. D. Smith to James Lauderdale, Apr. 23, 1847, Lauderdale Family Papers, TSLA.

  22. Peskin, Volunteers, 78; Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 72.

  23. McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 86; Sedgwick to sister, Apr. 30, 1847, Sedgwick, Correspondence, 1:86.

  24. McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 86–87; Smith, War, 2:57.

  25. Smith, War, 2:57; Campbell to wife, Apr. 18, 1847, Campbell Papers; Campbell to Campbell, Apr. 25, 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), 166; Ripley to sister, May 2, 1847, Ripley Papers.

  26. William A. DePalo Jr., The Mexican National Army, 1822–1852 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 124; Jamie S. Linder and William B. Eigelsbach, eds., “To War with Mexico: A Diary of the Mexican-American War,” Journal of East Tennessee History 73 (2001): 93, 99–100; Tipton Journal, TSLA; Yeager to John C. Yeager, Apr. 20, 1847, Yeager Papers.

  27. Yeager to brother, Apr. 20, 1847, Yeager Papers. The Mexican works were commonly referred to as “breastworks,” although they fell far short of the breast. They were generally constructed of “timber laid one above another and suported by stakes.” Barna Upton to brother, May 16, 1847, Upton Papers.

  28. 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), 205–6; Claiborne, “Reminiscences,” 10, 22, Claiborne Papers; Richard Ewell to mother, Apr. 22, 1847, Ewell Papers.

  29. George R. Stewart, John Phoenix, Esq., the Veritable Squibob: A Life of Captain George H. Derby, USA (New York: Henry Holt, 1937), 3–4.

  30. Ewell to mother, Apr. 22, 1847, Ewell Papers.

  31. McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 87; J. Frost, The Mexican War and Its Warriors (New Haven, Conn.: H. Mansfield, 1850), 149; Lieutenant Stevens to wife, Apr. 18, 1847, in Hazard Stevens, The Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, 2 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), 1:127. This source erroneously gives the date of this letter as Apr. 15.

  32. I was unable to conclusively identify the doctor, but it may have been Robert McMillan from South Carolina, who is listed as a surgeon of volunteers in summer 1847 in Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 2 vols. (1903; Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1994), 1:677.

  33. Davis, Autobiography, 151–53, 155–56.

  34. Lee to Mary Lee, Apr. 18, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers, VHS; Claiborne, “Reminiscences,” 22, Claiborne Papers; Christopher Phillips, Damned Yankee: The Life of General Nathaniel Lyon (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 51; General Orders No. 111, Apr. 17, 1847, in Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, 2 vols. (1864; Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 2:435.

  35. Scott’s battle report, Apr. 19, 1847, Senate Doc. No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.; Smith, War, 2:58–59; Bauer, Mexican War, 268; Alfred Hoyt Bill, Rehearsal for Conflict: The War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 229. The captured Mexican generals were José María Jarero, Rómulo Díaz de La Vega, Luis Noriega, Luis Pinzón, and a general named Obando. See Scott’s Apr. 19 battle report.

  36. Baron Antoine Henry Jomini, The Art of War, trans. G. H. Mendell and W. P. Craighill (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1862), 220–21; David G. Chandler, The Military Maxims of Napol
eon, trans. Sir George C. D’Aguilar (1987; Stackpole Books, 1994), 57; 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), 216; Benjamin Wingate to William English, Apr. 27, 1847, Wingate Papers.

  37. Wingate to English, Apr. 27, 1847, Wingate Papers; Stewart, John Phoenix, Esq., 48; R. E. Lee to Mary, Apr. ?, 1848, Lee Family Papers, VHS; DePalo, Mexican National Army, 124; Robert L. Scheina, Santa Anna: A Curse upon Mexico (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2002), 64.

  38. Lee to Mary, Apr. 18, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers; Anderson to wife, Apr. 29, May 1, May 29, 1847, printed in Robert Anderson, An Artillery Officer in the Mexican War, 1846–7 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911), 147, 151, 191.

  39. Bevin Alexander, How Great Generals Win (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 34; Edmund Kirby Smith to Brown, May 27, 1847, Smith Papers, BLY; Yeager to Yeager, Jun. 10, 1847, Yeager Papers; Upton to brother Elias, May 16, 1847, Upton Papers.

  40. Peskin, Volunteers, 83; Ramsey, Other Side, 212–20; 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), 9; Lee to Mary, Apr. 18, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers; Kendall to Picayune, Apr. 25, 1847, Kendall Family Papers, UTA.

  41. Lee to sons, Feb. 27, 1847, Lee Family Papers, VHS; Lee to Mary, Apr. 18, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers; Canice Ciruzzi, “Phoenix Revisited: Another Look at George Horatio Derby,” Journal of San Diego History 26 (spring 1980): 77–89; Dabney Herdon Maury, Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 38–39; Johnston quoted on 39.

  42. Maury, Recollections, 44; Ciruzzi, “Phoenix Revisited.”

  43. Peskin, Volunteers, 82–83; Tipton Journal, TSLA; Uncapher Diary, UTA.

  44. Richard Ewell to mother, Apr. 22, 1847, Ewell Papers; Sargent, Gathering Laurels, 9.

  45. Peskin, Volunteers, 82; McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 91–92; Hitchcock to Wilson, Apr. 19, 1847, Henry Wilson Papers, BLY; Hitchcock to Scott, Apr. 23, 1847, Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, LC.

  46. Peskin, Volunteers, 82; Smith, War, 2:58; Scott to Marcy, Apr. 19, 1847, LR, RG 107, NA; Laidley, Surrounded by Dangers, 75.

  47. Upton to brother Elias, May 16, 1847, Upton Papers.

  Chapter 6. Jalapa: Garden of Mexico

  1. W. L. Bliss to sister, Apr. 23, 1847, Mexican War Collection, UTA; Jacob Hoffer to parents, May 24, 1847, Jacob Hoffer Letter, BLY; Scott to Taylor, Apr. 24, 1847, Senate Doc. No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.; Lee to Mary, Apr. 18, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers, VHS; George B. McClellan, The Mexican War Diary of General George B. McClellan, ed. William Stan Myers (New York: DaCapo Press, 1972), 90; Josiah Gorgas quoted in Frank E. Vandiver, Ploughshares into Swords: Josiah Gorgas and Confederate Ordnance (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1952), 379–80; Jack Allen Meyer, South Carolina in the Mexican War: A History of the Palmetto Regiment of Volunteers, 1846–1917 (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1996), 63; Thomas D. Tennery, The Mexican War Diary of Thomas D. Tennery, ed. D. E. Livingston-Little (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 83; George W. Hartman, A Private’s Own Journal: Giving an Account of the Battles in Mexico, under Gen’l Scott (Greencastle: E. Robinson, 1849), 12.

  2. Stevens to wife, May 1, 1847, in Hazard Stevens, The Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, 2 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), 1:134; Wingate to English, Apr. 27, 1847, Hiram Wingate Papers, FHS; Hitchcock to Scott, Apr. 23, 1847, Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, LC; Kendall to Picayune, Apr. 25, 1847, George Kendall Papers, UTA; 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), 80. Upon visiting the village of Cerro Gordo in 1999, I discovered that the story persists among the residents that Santa Anna accepted money from the Americans to lose the battle.

  3. Pedro Santoni, Mexicans at Arms: Puro Federalists and the Politics of War, 1845–1848 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996), 202, 208; Dean B. Mahin, Olive Branch and Sword: The United States and Mexico, 1845–1848 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997), 95.

  4. E. Kirby Smith to wife, May 27, 1847, Edmund Kirby Smith Papers, UTA; Kendall to Picayune, May 3, 1847, Kendall Papers; Edward S. Wallace, General William Jenkins Worth: Monterey’s Forgotten Hero (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1953), 140; Raphael Semmes, Service Afloat and Ashore during the Mexican War (Cincinnati: Wm. H. Moore, 1851), 207–8. Semmes’s criticism was a result of a disagreement with Scott during the campaign that would affect his attitude for the rest of his life. This disagreement will be mentioned later in this chapter.

  5. Ripley to mother, Mar. 16, 1847, Roswell Ripley Papers, BLY.

  6. Anaya was acting as a substitute president until a general election took place on May 15. See Wilfrid Hardy Callcott, Church and State in Mexico, 1822–1857 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1926), 193.

  7. 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), 34–41.

  8. 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), 217–18, 297–98; Wingate to English, Apr. 27, 1847, Wingate Papers; Hiram B. Yeager to brother John, Apr. 20, 1847, Hiram B. Yeager Papers, DRTL; W. L. Bliss to sister, Apr. 23, 1847, Mexican War Collection, UTA; Soldiers’ accounts are replete with such descriptions of the town. Robert Anderson, An Artillery Officer in the Mexican War, 1846–7 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911), 143; H. Judge Moore, Scott’s Campaign from the Rendezvous on the Island of Lobos to the Taking of the City (Charleston: J. B. Nixon, 1849), 69–71; McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 91–92; Kendall to Picayune, Apr. 25, 1847, Kendall Papers; Lee to Mary, Apr. 22, 1847; George Bolling Lee Papers; Robert A. Law, “A Letter from Vera Cruz in 1847,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 18 (Oct. 1914): 216; 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), 75.

  9. Christopher Phillips, Damned Yankee: The Life of General Nathaniel Lyon (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 52; Israel Uncapher Mexican War Diary, UTA; Kirkham to wife, May 8, 1847, in Ralph W. Kirkham, The Mexican War Journal and Letters of Ralph W. Kirkham, ed. Robert Ryal Miller (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991), 15; McClellan, Mexican War Diary, 91; ? to William Grimes, Dec. 14, 1847, William Henry Grimes Papers, Duke University; Carl M. Becker, “John William Lowe: Failure in Inner-Direction,” Ohio History 73 (spring 1964): 80; Amasa Gleason Clark, Reminiscences of a Centenarian (Bandera, Tex.: Printed by Amasa Clark, 1930), 21; Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas (1985; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 169.

  10. Stevens, Life, 1:130; Moore, Scott’s Campaign, 69; Scott to Wilson, Apr. 23, 1847, Henry Wilson Papers, BLY.

  11. John R. B. Gardinier to Wilson, May 3, 1847, Joseph Daniels to Wilson, Apr. 29, 1847, and J. B. Porter to Wilson, Jun. 5, 1847, Wilson Papers.

  12. Tennery, Mexican War Diary, 84, 87; Smith, Diary, 8, Joseph Rowe Smith Papers, BLY; Dabney Herdon Maury, Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 40; Scott quoted in Gary Gallagher, “We Are Our Own Trumpeters: Robert E. Lee Describes Winfield Scott’s Campaign to Mexico City,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 95 (July 1987): 368, n. 13. Johnston had previously been wounded in Florida during the Seminole War and would later receive another serious wound in the Battle of Fair Oaks in 1862. Perhaps his personal history helps to explain his Civil War generalship.

  13. Judah and Smith, Chronicles, 345; M
eyer, South Carolina, 60–61; Peskin, Volunteers, 85, 96.

  14. Thomas R. Irey, “Soldiering, Suffering, and Dying in the Mexican War,” Journal of the West 11 (April 1972): 285–86, 290, 298. The case of Amasa Clark from New York provides a contrary example. He volunteered for service in the Mexican War at age twenty-one, became ill at Jalapa, and was confined to a hospital for several weeks. He recovered and lived to be 101 years old. See Clark, Reminiscences, 8–9, 20.

  15. Jacob Hoffer to parents, May 24, 1847, Jacob Hoffer Letter, BLY; Uncapher Diary, UTA; Peskin, Volunteers, 95; Kendall to Picayune, Apr. 25, 1847, Kendall Papers.

  16. Judah and Smith, Chronicles, 221; Anderson, Artillery Officer, 145; Uncapher Diary, UTA.

  17. William Harrison to brother, Sep. 16, 1847, Allmand Family Letters, BLY; Lieutenant Isaac Stevens of the engineers agreed. See his May 1, 1847, letter to his wife in Stevens, Life, 1:134; 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), 30; Lieutenant Theodore Laidley thought it just the opposite: “The higher classes receive us as kindly as they dare, the lower classes, those whom we are doing great service are our bitterest foes.” See a May 19, 1847, letter to his father in Laidley, Surrounded by Dangers, 88.

  18. Peskin, Volunteers, 97; Tennery, Mexican War Diary, 88; Uncapher Diary, UTA; General Orders No. 127, Apr. 29, 1847, Justin H. Smith Collection, LAC, UT.

  19. Joseph Smith to Juliet, Jun. 13, 1847, Joseph Rowe Smith Papers; John Dodd to wife Eliza, Oct. 24, 1847, John Dodd Papers, BLY; Robert Anderson to sister, Feb. 13, 1848, Mexican War Collection, UTA; Lee to John Mackay, Oct. 2, 1847, Robert E. Lee letter, Folios 137–38, VHS; Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 10; Peskin, Volunteers, 93; Johannsen, To the Halls, 167–68.

  20. William Fraser Diary, BLY; Henry S. Lane, “The Mexican War Journal of Henry S. Lane,” ed. Graham A. Barringer, Indiana Magazine of History 53 (Dec. 1957): 426–27, 430, 432; Marcy to Wetmore, Apr. 22, 1847, Marcy Papers, LC.