A Gallant Little Army

by Timothy D Johnson

  32. Phillips, Damned Yankee, 54; Kendall to Picayune, Sep. 8, 1847, George Kendall Papers, UTA.

  33. Martin A. Haynes, Gen. Scott’s Guide in Mexico: A Biographical Sketch of Col. Noah E. Smith (Lake Village, N.H.: Reprinted from the Lake Village Times, 1887), 30–31.

  34. Vindication of the Military Character and Services of General Franklin Pierce (circular pamphlet reprinted from various newspapers, 1852), 8, BLY; Haynes, Gen. Scott’s Guide, 31.

  35. Scott’s battle report, Aug. 28, 1847, Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Exec.

  36. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (1934; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), 1:269; Vindication, 8, BLY; Shields’s battle report, Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Exec.

  37. James Butterfield, “Reminiscences,” Justin H. Smith Collection, LAC, UT.

  38. Captain Thompson Morris’s battle report, Aug. 23, 1847, and Lieutenant Gustavus Smith’s battle report, Aug. 23, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO; Joseph Rowe Smith, Diary, Joseph Rowe Smith Papers, BLY; Wilkins to mother, Aug. 24, 1847, Wilkins Papers; Stevens, Rogue’s March, 239–40.

  39. John Hammond Moore, ed., “Private Johnson Fights the Mexicans, 1847–1848,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 67 (Oct. 1966): 221.

  40. Jeffry D. Wert, General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 44; Lieutenant Thomas Williams to father, Oct. 1, 1847, Thomas Williams Letters in Justin H. Smith Collection, LAC, UTA; Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 48.

  41. Bauer, Mexican War, 299–300; Stevens, Rogue’s March, 241–42.

  42. James F. Babcock, Fate of Major Frederick D. Mills Late of the Fifteenth Regiment, U. S. Army (pamphlet, ca. 1848), BLY; May, “Iowan,” 173.

  43. Barnard Reminiscences, BLY; Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 50–51; Kearny to General Mason, Nov. 1, 1849, Philip Kearny Letter, BLY.

  44. Babcock, Fate, BLY; May, “Iowan,” 173, n. 8. Mills County, Iowa, was named for Major Mills.

  45. Barnard Reminiscences, BLY.

  46. Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 49; Barnard Reminiscences, BLY.

  47. Semmes, Service, 429; Miller, Shamrock and Sword, 85–90; Wilkins to mother, Aug. 24, 1847, Wilkins Papers; Stevens, Rogue’s March, 242; Worth’s battle report, Aug. 23, 1847, RG 94, LR. AGO.

  48. Bauer, Mexican War, 301, 305, n. 38; Robert Anderson, An Artillery Officer in the Mexican War, 1846–7 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911), 292, 299–300, 326; Colonel James Duncan’s battle report, Aug. 22, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO.

  49. Wilkins to mother, Aug. 24, 1847, Wilkins Papers; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885), 1:145.

  50. Lee to Mary, Aug. 22, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers, VHS; captured Mexican soldier letter quoted in Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 53; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 119; Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson, Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1982), 78–79.

  51. Wilkins to mother, Aug. 24, 1847, Wilkins Papers, BLY; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 111.

  Chapter 11. Mortification and Mistake

  1. William Austine to cousin, Nov. 1, 1847, William Austine Papers, SHC, UNC.

  2. Pedro Santoni, Mexicans at Arms: Puro Federalist and the Politics of War (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996), 211; Dean B. Mahin, Olive Branch and Sword: The United States and Mexico, 1845–1848 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997), 113–15; K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1974; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 307.

  3. Winfield Scott, “Vera Cruz & Its Castle,” Oct. 27, 1846, LR, RG 107, NA; Ethan Allen Hitchcock letter, Jan. 23, 1848, Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.

  4. David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973), 513; Thomas Williams to father, Oct. 1, 1847, Justin H. Smith Collection, LAC, UT; Hitchcock to Lizzie, Aug. 24, 1847, Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, LC; 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), 116–17; Stevens quote found in 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), 249.

  5. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 117; Christopher Phillips, Damned Yankee: The Life of General Nathaniel Lyon (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 55; 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), 207; 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), 55; Edward S. Wallace, General William Jenkins Worth: Monterey’s Forgotten Hero (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1953), 157–60; Robert E. May, John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader (1984; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 184–85; Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Roy P. Stonesifer, The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 95.

  6. Martin A. Haynes, Gen. Scott’s Guide in Mexico: A Biographical Sketch of Col. Noah E. Smith (Lake Village, N.H.: Reprinted from the Lake Village Times, 1887), 35–36.

  7. Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 54; Hitchcock to Lizzie, Aug. 24, 1847, Hitchcock Papers; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 119; William Austine to cousin, Nov. 1, 1847, Austine Papers.

  8. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 115, 119; Kirby Smith to wife, Aug. 22, 1847, in 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), 207; George Wilkins Kendall, The War between the United States and Mexico (New York: D. Appleton, 1851), 35; Pletcher, Diplomacy, 515; Davis, Autobiography, 211; Haynes, Gen. Scott’s Guide, 36–37.

  9. Madison Mills Diary, FHS.

  10. Buckner to Mary Kingsbury, Sep. 6, 1847, Simon Boliver Buckner Papers, FHS; Kirby Smith to wife, Sep. 2, 1847, in Smith, To Mexico with Scott, 213–14; Dwight Anderson and Nancy Scott Anderson, The Generals: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 85.

  11. Davis, Autobiography, 209–10, 215–16; May, John A. Quitman, 183–84.

  12. Mahin, Olive Branch, 116–18; Wallace Ohrt, Defiant Peacemaker: Nicholas Trist in the Mexican War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 131; Richard Bruce Winders, Crisis in the Southwest: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle over Texas (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2002), 135; Pletcher, Diplomacy, 516–19.

  13. Robert Ryal Miller, Shamrock and Sword: The Saint Patrick’s Battalion in the U.S.-Mexican War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 92–105.

  14. Mahin, Olive Branch, 118; Kendall, War, 35; Robert Anderson, An Artillery Officer in the Mexican War, 1846–7 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911), 309–10.

  15. Ripley to mother, Aug. 27, Roswell Ripley Papers, BLY; John Sedgwick, Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major-General, comp. Henry D. Sedgwick, 2 vols. (DeVinne Press, 1902), 1:120; Phillips, Damned Yankee, 55; Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 55; Frederick Wirtzell to Henry Eddy, Oct. 26, 1847, J. T. Hughes Letters, Justin H. Smith Collection, LAC, UT; Moses Barnard Mexican War Reminiscences, BLY; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 121.

  16. Anderson, Artillery Officer, 310; Beauregard to Major John L. Smith, Sep. 20, 1847, United States Corps of Engineers, Report of a Reconnaissance of the Niño Perdido and San Antonio Gates of Mexico City, BLY.

  17. R. E. Lee to John Mackay, Oct. 2, 1847, Robert E. Lee Letter, Folios 137–138, VHS.

  18. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 96; Wallace, General William Jenkins Worth, 160.

  19. Bauer, Mexican War, 308–9; Justin H. Smith, The War with Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 2:140.r />
  20. Smith, War, 2:143–44; Bauer, Mexican War, 309; Worth’s battle report, Sep. 10, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA.

  21. Anderson, Artillery Officer, 312; Kirby Smith to General Brown, Oct. 29, 1847, Edmund Kirby Smith Papers, BLY; Smith, To Mexico with Scott, 217. Forlorn hope was a military term often used to describe a storming party that is assigned the dangerous assignment of leading an attack. Smith’s use of the term here was to convey a sense of desperation over the difficult task that lay ahead.

  22. Worth’s battle report, Sep. 10, 1847, Wright’s battle report, Sep. 10, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA.

  23. McIntosh’s battle report, Sep. 10, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Kendall to Picayune, Sep. 8, 1847, George Kendall Papers, UTA; Bauer, Mexican War, 310; Arthur Howard Noll, General Kirby-Smith (Sewanee, Tenn.: University Press at the University of the South, 1907), 57–58; Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 57–58. McIntosh lived until Sep. 26 and was able, with the assistance of staff officers, to submit a battle report.

  24. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, “Sketches of the Campaign,” Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, USMA; Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 57–58; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 122.

  25. Smith, War, 2:147; Garland’s battle report, Sep. 9, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Anderson, Artillery Officer, 312.

  26. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885), 1:152–53.

  27. Kendall to Picayune, Sep. 8, 1847, Kendall Papers; Bauer, Mexican War, 310; Barnard Reminiscences, BLY.

  28. Kendall to Picayune, Sep. 8, 1847, Kendall Papers.

  29. Bauer, Mexican War, 310–11; 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), 202; George Maney to Thomas Maney, Sep. 21, 1847, John Kimberly Papers, SHC, UNC; Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field: The Diary of Major General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, ed. W. A. Croffut (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1909), 297–99.

  30. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 1:152; Peskin, Volunteers, 185. For Russell Weigley’s description of Grant the general, see his The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 128–52.

  31. Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 58–59.

  Chapter 12. God Is a Yankee

  1. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Beauregard to Major John L. Smith, Sep. 20, 1847, United States Corps of Engineers, Report of a Reconnaissance of the Niño Perdido and San Antonio Gates of Mexico City, BLY; T. Harry Williams, P. G. T. Beauregard (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954), 28.

  2. 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), 121, 123.

  3. The most detailed account of the conference, and the one from which this narrative is drawn, is found in 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), 68–72.

  4. William A. DePalo Jr., The Mexican National Army, 1822–1852 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 73; K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1974; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 313; Justin H. Smith, The War with Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 2:149–51.

  5. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Robert E. May, John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader (1984; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 189; Smith, War, 2:152.

  6. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (1934; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), 1:280–83; Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Smith, War, 2:152.

  7. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, and Major John L. Gardner’s battle report, Sep. 20, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 124–25.

  8. Freeman, Lee, 1:279–80.

  9. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, and Major John L. Gardner’s battle report, Sep. 20, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, 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), 98; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 125.

  10. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 99; Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field: The Diary of Major General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, ed. W. A. Croffut (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1909), 302; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 125.

  11. DePalo, Mexican National Army, 137; American Star, Sep. 23, 1847, 1.

  12. Quitman’s battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Donald E. Houston, “The Role of Artillery in the Mexican War,” Journal of the West 11 (Apr. 1972): 283.

  13. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 99–100. As a Union corps commander, Major General Reno was mortally wounded at South Mountain on Sep. 14, 1862. Reno, Nevada, was named in his honor. See John C. Waugh, The Class of 1846 (New York: Warner Books, 1994), 529.

  14. Bauer, Mexican War, 317; Smith, War, 2:156.

  15. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 100; DePalo, Mexican National Army, 137.

  16. Major Thomas H. Seymour’s battle report, Sep. 21, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 100–101; Smith, War, 2:155–56; 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), 62.

  17. American Star, Sep. 23, 1847, 1; Smith, War, 2:156; Bauer, Mexican War, 317; Colonel Timothy Patrick Andrews’s battle report, Sep. 17, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA.

  18. James D. Elderkin, Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of a Soldier of Three Wars (Detroit: James D. Elderkin, 1899), 69; James I. Robertson Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (New York: Macmillan, 1997), 66.

  19. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, 67.

  20. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; George W. Hartman, A Private’s Own Journal: Giving an Account of the Battles in Mexico, under Gen’l Scott (Greencastle: E. Robinson, 1849), 19; Bauer, Mexican War, 317; May, John A. Quitman, 190–91.

  21. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 126; John S. Devlin, The Marine Corps in Mexico: Setting Forth its Conduct as Established by Testimony before a General Court Martial (Washington: Lemuel Towers, 1852), iv. Regarding the marines’ behavior during the assault, Bauer simply states that the marines “did not press their advance aggressively” (Mexican War, 317). However, another marine officer, Lieutenant John S. Devlin, was present and would later publish an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and after that a pamphlet in which he criticized Reynolds and the other marines for refusing to advance. He also named Major William Dulany as a marine officer who refused to advance. Dulany was later court-martialed for looting a convent, and Devlin was suspended from the service for challenging Reynolds to a duel during a verbal confrontation.

  22. Quitman’s battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; 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), 17; Israel Uncapher Mexican War Diary, 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), 168, 177–78; John W. Geary’s battle report, Sep. 15, 1847, John White Geary Papers, BLY. Geary went on to serve as the first mayor of San Francisco, and after the Civil War, he served as governor of Pennsylvania. Pam M. Geary, Colonel John W. Geary in the Mexican War and California in ‘49 (Pacifica, Calif.: Shade Tree Press, 2000), 96–98, 105–10; Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), 169–70.

  23. Quitman’s battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Uncapher Diary, UTA; Smith, War, 2:157.

  24. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 101; Jeffry D. Wert, General James L
ongstreet: The Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 45. Lieutenant P. G. T. Beauregard thought that Lieutenant Lewis Armistead, Sixth Infantry, was among the first over the wall. Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico, 81–82.

  25. Quitman, battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 126.

  26. Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico, 82–84; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 126; Uncapher Diary, UTA; Peter F. Stevens, The Rogue’s March: John Riley and the St. Patrick’s Battalion, 1846–48 (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1999), 270, 275; Bauer, Mexican War, 316; Peskin, Volunteers, 171.

  27. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Smith, War, 2:160–61; Bauer, Mexican War, 318; Quitman’s battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; J. W. Geary Papers, BLY.

  28. Stevens, Rogue’s March, 270–76. All quotes found therein. Harney also whipped and branded eight of the fifteen whose sentences had been reduced.

  29. Bauer, Mexican War, 318.

  Chapter 13. A Devil of a Time

  1. Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Roy P. Stonesifer, The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 101; Page Memoir, Page Family Papers, VHS; 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), 179.

  2. Quitman’s battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Robert E. May, John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader (1984; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 191; Charles Winslow Elliott, Winfield Scott: The Soldier and the Man (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 547. Elliott recorded that Quitman’s aides “quietly” gathered the division, which suggests an effort on Quitman’s part to keep his intentions secret until he could get well underway.