A Gallant Little Army

by Timothy D Johnson

  3. 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), 41; 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), 234; Elliott, Winfield Scott, 547; Justin H. Smith, The War with Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 2:161.

  4. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA. James W. Pohl notes in his article comparing the campaign to Jominian theory that “Scott knew . . . that he must have the capital to end the war.” Such was not the case. As Scott stated, he would have accepted a peace without capturing the city. James W. Pohl, “The Influence of Antoine Henri de Jomini on Winfield Scott’s Campaign in the Mexican War,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 77 (Jul. 1973): 99.

  5. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885), 1:154.

  6. George Ballentine, Autobiography of an English Soldier in the United States Army, ed. William H. Goetzmann (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1986), 301–2.

  7. Quitman’s battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; T. Harry Williams, P. G. T. Beauregard (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954), 31; Smith, War, 2:159.

  8. Quitman, battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA.

  9. Williams, Beauregard, 31; 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), 88–89.

  10. Quitman, battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Smith, War, 2:159–60; May, John A. Quitman, 192.

  11. May, John A. Quitman, 191–93; Smith, War, 2:160.

  12. Uncapher 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), 19; 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), 127; Lee to Mackay, Oct. 4, 1847, 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 (Jul. 1987): 372–73. Drum and Lee were classmates at West Point.

  13. Davis, Autobiography, 234–35; Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA.

  14. Quitman’s battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA.

  15. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 126–27; Frank E. Vandiver, Mighty Stonewall (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957), 39; Jackson quoted in James I. Robertson Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (New York: Macmillan, 1997), 68.

  16. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 1:155–56; 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; Isaac I. Stevens, Campaigns of the Rio Grande and of Mexico (New York: D. Appleton, 1851), 57.

  17. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (1934; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), 1:283; Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 136.

  18. Smith, War, 2:161–62.

  19. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 1:157–58.

  20. Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 62; Smith, War, 2:162; Grant, Personal Memoirs, 1:1587–59.

  21. K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1974; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 320–21; Smith, War, 2:162; Kirkham, Mexican War Journal, 164.

  22. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, and Quitman’s battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA.

  23. Davis, Autobiography, 236.

  24. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, and Quitman’s battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico, 97–98; Hachaliah Brown to Lemuel Brown, Oct. 31, 1847, Lemuel C. Brown Papers, BLY.

  25. Amasa Gleason Clark, Reminiscences of a Centenarian (Bandera, Tex.: Printed by Amasa Clark, 1930), 29; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 128; Freeman, Lee, 1:284; Elliott, Winfield Scott, 551–52; John C. Waugh, The Class of 1846 (New York: Warner Books, 1994), 124.

  26. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA. The four days of fighting (Aug. 19 and 20, Sep. 8 and 13) does not include the bombardment of Sep. 12.

  27. Hartman, Private’s Own Journal, 19; Wyatt B. Stapp to Sarah Hane Berry, May 16, 1848, Berry Family Papers, FHS; Bauer, Mexican War, 322; Quitman’s battle report, Sep. 29, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Davis, Autobiography, 241; Smith, War, 2:167; Alfred Hoyt Bill, Rehearsal for Conflict: The War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 301–2; Haynes, Gen. Scott’s Guide, 44.

  28. Haynes, Gen. Scott’s Guide, 44; 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), 16–17; Smith, War, 2:167; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 128–29; Brown to Lemuel Brown, Oct. 31, 1847, Brown Papers; Lee to John Mackay, Oct. 2, 1847, Robert E. Lee Letter, Folios 137–38, VHS.

  29. Brown to Lemuel Brown, Oct. 31, 1847, Brown Papers; Winslow Sanderson to Dear Sir, Nov. 21, 1847, Winslow Fuller Sanderson Papers, BLY.

  Chapter 14. The Preoccupations of the Occupation

  1. Pillow to Barnard, Sep. 19, 1847, copy in Moses Barnard Reminiscences, BLY; Hachaliah Brown to Lemuel Brown, Oct. 31, 1847, Lemuel C. Brown Papers, BLY; Kendall to Picayune, Oct. 3, 1847, George Kendall Papers, UTA; 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), 129–30; R. E. Lee to John Mackay, Oct. 2, 1847, Robert E. Lee Letter, Folios 137–38, 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), 192.

  2. 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), 258–59.

  3. Peskin, Volunteers, 191; Page Memoir, Page Family Papers, VHS; Jeffry D. Wert, General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 45; 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; Barna Upton to Elias Upton, May 16, 1847, and William W. Fogg to Nehemiah Upton, Apr. 20, 1848, Barna N. Upton Papers, BLY; Lee to John Mackay, Oct. 2, 1847, Robert E. Lee Letter, Folios 137–38, VHS.

  4. Sedgwick to father, Oct. 15, 1847, in John Sedgwick, Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major-General, comp. Henry D. Sedgwick, 2 vols. (DeVinne Press, 1902), 1:130; 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), 60, 69, 75–76.

  5. William Adee to Samuel Adee, Jun. 16 and Oct. 16, 1847, and McBride to Adee, Nov. 26, 1847, William F. Adee Papers, BLY.

  6. Wert, General James Longstreet, 45; Amasa Gleason Clark, Reminiscences of a Centenarian (Bandera, Tex.: Printed by Amasa Clark, 1930), 31; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 129; Hachaliah Brown to Lemuel Brown, Oct. 31, 1847, Brown Papers.

  7. James I. Robertson Jr., General A. P. Hill: The Story of a Confederate Warrior (New York: Random House, 1987), 9–15, 318; Hill to brother, Sep. 12, 1847, and Hill to parents, Oct. 23, 1847, Ambrose Powell Hill Papers, VHS.

  8. K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1974; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 330; Justin H. Smith, The War with Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 2:171–72.

  9. Albert Brackett to Charles Brackett, Oct. 29, 1847, Albert G. Brackett Papers, DRTL; Jeremiah Mewhinney to Johnson Mewhinney, Oct. 29, 1847, Mewhinney Family Papers, DRT
L; A. P. Hill to parents, Oct. 23, 1847, Hill Papers.

  10. Hill to parents, Oct. 23, 1847, Hill Papers, VHS.

  11. Richard Bruce Winders, “Puebla’s Forgotten Heroes,” Military History of the West 23 (1993): 8; Theodore to father, Oct. 16, 1847, in 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), 107.

  12. Childs to Scott, Oct. 13, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Bauer, Mexican War, 328–29; Smith, War, 2:171–72, 174.

  13. Winders, “Puebla’s Forgotten Heroes,” 10–14; Madison Mills Diary, FHS; John Dodd to Eliza (wife), Jan. 10, 1848, John Dodd Papers, BLY; Laidley, Surrounded by Dangers, 107–15; J. Jacob Oswandel, Notes of the Mexican War, 1846–47–48 (Philadelphia: J. Jacob Oswandel, 1885), 288–89.

  14. Bauer, Mexican War, 331; Albert Brackett to Charles Brackett, Oct. 29, 1847, Brackett Papers; A. P. Hill to parents, Oct. 23, 1847, Hill Papers; Jeremiah Mewhinney to Johnson Mewhinney (father), Oct. 29, 1847, Mewhinney Papers; Oswandel, Notes, 345.

  15. Brackett to Brackett, Oct. 29, 1847, Brackett Papers; A. P. Hill to friends, Nov. 8, 1847, Hill Papers; Mills Diary, FHS.

  16. Hill to parents, Oct. 23, 1847, and Hill to friends, Nov. 8, 1847, Hill Papers.

  17. Winders, “Puebla’s Forgotten Heroes,” 23; Oswandel, Notes, 359–60.

  18. H. Clay to Mr. Levesh, Nov. 26, 1847, Mexican War Collection, UTA; 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), 61; Will Lytle to unknown, Jan. 15, 1848, in William Haines Lytle, For Honor, Glory and Union: The Mexican and Civil War Letters of Brig. Gen. William Haines Lytle, ed. Ruth C. Carter (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 52; Clark to John, Jan. 19, 1848, N. H. Clark Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri.

  19. Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, 2 vols. (1864; Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 2:574–75; Bauer, Mexican War, 332; Meginess Journal, John Franklin Meginess Papers, UTA.

  20. 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), 232.

  21. Levinson, Wars within War, 61.

  22. Otis A. Singletary, The Mexican War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 100; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 139; Meginess Journal, Meginess Papers; H. Clay to Mr. Levesh, Nov. 26, 1847, Mexican War Collection, UTA.

  23. Marcy to Scott, May 8, 1847, United States War Department Letters, BLY; Nancy Nichols Barker, The French Experience in Mexico, 1821–1861: A History of Constant Misunderstanding (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 151–55, 162, 178; Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 11–12, 16–17; Michele Cunningham, Mexico and the Foreign Policy of Napoleon III (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 28.

  24. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 131; Peskin, Volunteers, 192, 196–97; Henry Heth, The Memoirs of Henry Heth, ed. James L. Morrison (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974), 52; Hill to father, Feb. 29, 1848, Hill Papers.

  25. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 131–32, 163; Uncapher Mexican War Diary, UTA; 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), 41–43; Carl M. Becker, “John William Lowe: Failure in Inner-Direction,” Ohio History 73 (spring 1964): 80; Sargent, Gathering Laurels, 21; Thomas G. Drips to cousin, Jan. 31, 1848, Mexican War Collection, UTA.

  26. Sedgwick to sister, Oct. 26, 1847, in Sedgwick, Correspondence, 1:136. Sedgwick’s reference to “go ahead people” is probably derived from Davy Crockett’s famous motto, which became the topic of poems and songs in the early nineteenth century: “Be sure you are right, then go ahead!” See Michael A. Lofaro and Joe Cummings, eds., Crockett at Two Hundred: New Perspectives on the Man and the Myth (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 86–88.

  27. Moseley, “Religious Impact,” 42; Walter H. Hebert, Fighting Joe Hooker (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944), 34; Robert Anderson to sister, Feb. 13, 1848, Mexican War Collection, UTA; Heth, Memoirs, 57–58.

  28. David M. Jordon, Winfield Scott Hancock: A Soldier’s Life (1988; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 17; Heth, Memoirs, 59–60.

  29. Scott to Marcy, Sep. 18, 1847, RG 94, LR, AGO, NA; Quitman to George T. M. Davis, Apr. 18, 1856, Quitman Letter, BLY.

  30. Bradford to Tazewell, Jan. 2, 1848, Edmund Bradford Papers, BLY; 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), 69–71, 73; Peskin, Volunteers, 169–71.

  31. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 35, 151; Laidley, Surrounded by Dangers, 120; Lee to Mackay, Oct. 2, 1847, Robert E. Lee Letter, Folios 137–38, VHS.

  32. Scott to Pillow, Oct. 2, 1847, House Exec. Doc. No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Exec.

  33. Pillow to Scott, Oct. 3, 1847, House Exec. Doc. No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Exec.

  34. Pillow to Scott, Oct. 3, 1847, Scott to Pillow, Oct. 4, 1847, House Exec. Doc. No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Exec.

  35. Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Roy P. Stonesifer, The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 104, 106; Davis, Autobiography, 263–65.

  36. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 109–11.

  37. “The Letter of ‘Leonidas,’” New Orleans Picayune, Sep. 17, 1847. This was the second time the letter was published in a New Orleans paper. The previous week, it appeared in the New Orleans Delta. This latter version contained a paragraph not included in the first rendition, which portrayed Pillow as challenging a Mexican officer to one-on-one combat while the battle swirled about them, with the nimble, more skillful Pillow defeating and killing the larger, more muscular Mexican.

  38. Hitchcock to Pillow, Nov. 24, 1847, Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, LC; William Gardner to sister, Nov. 22, 1847, William Montgomery Gardner Papers, SHC, UNC; A. P. Hill to brother, Sep. 12, 1847, Hill Papers.

  39. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 109–10; Raphael Semmes, Service Afloat and Ashore during the Mexican War (Cincinnati: Wm. H. Moore, 1851), 358; Charles Winslow Elliott, Winfield Scott: The Soldier and the Man (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 568; Winslow Sanderson to Martha, Nov. 25, 1847, Winslow Fuller Sanderson Papers, BLY.

  40. General Orders No. 349, Senate Doc. No. 65, 30th Cong., 1st Exec.; Worth to Marcy, Nov. 16, 1847, quoted in Elliott, Winfield Scott, 571–73; Scott to Duncan, Nov. 18, 1847, James Duncan Papers, USMA.

  41. James K. Polk, The Diary of James K. Polk, ed. Milo Milton Quaife, 4 vols. (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1910), 3:245–46, 251–52, 266.

  42. Polk, Diary, 3:267–96; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 145; Mason to Duncan, Mar. 24, 1848, Duncan Papers, USMA.

  43. Marcy to Scott, Jan. 13, 1848, United States War Department Letters, BLY; Scott to Marcy, Feb. 9, 1848, in Scott, Memoirs, 2:572–73.

  44. Pillow to Mary, Nov. 25, 1847, quoted in Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 113.

  45. “Scott’s Address to the Court,” Mar. 16, 1848, Senate Doc. No. 65, 30th Cong., 1st Exec.

  46. 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), 321; Lee to George Custis, Apr. 8, 1848, and Lee to Mary, Mar. 15, 1848, Lee Family Papers, VHS; Laidley to father, Feb. 11, 1848, in Laidley, Surrounded by Dangers, 145; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 151, 171; Romeyn B. Ayres, Mexican War Diary, SHC, UNC; Drips to cousin, Feb. 26, 1848, Mexican War Collection, UTA.

  47. Elliott, Scott, 585; Laidley to father, May 13, 1848, Laidley, Surr
ounded by Dangers, 159–60.

  48. Pillow to Duncan, Jun. 28, 1848, Duncan Papers, USMA; Elliott, Winfield Scott, 589; Bauer, Mexican War, 373–74. Bauer aptly summarized Scott’s treatment on 374: “Despite being the transcendent military figure of the war, his facility for the inept phrase had provided the opportunity for lesser men to reduce him, temporarily, to their stature.”

  Epilogue

  1. James K. Polk, The Diary of James K. Polk, ed. Milo Milton Quaife, 4 vols. (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1910), 3:196, 199; K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1974; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 382.

  2. Robert W. Drexler, Guilty of Making Peace: A Biography of Nicholas P. Trist (University Press of America, 1991), 115; Wallace Ohrt, Defiant Peacemaker: Nicholas Trist in the Mexican War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 137–40; Dean B. Mahin, Olive Branch and Sword: The United States and Mexico, 1845–1848 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997), 141; Polk, Diary, 3:300.

  3. Trist quote in Drexler, Guilty of Making Peace, 106; Robert Anderson to sister, Feb. 13, 1848, Mexican War Collection, UTA; ? Cantey to John Cantey (cousin), Mar. 6, 1848, John Cantey Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.

  4. Bauer, Mexican War, 382; Mahin, Olive Branch, 186.

  5. Williams quoted 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), 418; Gardner to brother, Oct. 24, 1847, William Montgomery Gardner Papers, SHC, UNC; Dabney Herdon Maury, Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 30; James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America, ed. James I. Robertson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), 36–37, 156.

  6. Ralph Henry Gabriel. “Notes on Military Government,” Box 16, Ralph Henry Gabriel Papers, Stirling Library, Yale University; Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, 2 vols. (1864; Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 2:395; General Henry B. Carrington, “Winfield Scott’s Visit to Columbus,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 19 (Jul. 1910): 282; Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, 156.