The Wages of Fame

by Thomas Fleming

  “What if I do think so? What if I thought there was some kind of understanding between you? What would the president think of that? I wonder.”

  “I doubt if the president will think anything of it—because it isn’t true.”

  “There’s something about it that stinks almost as much as this damn camp,” Pillow said. He stalked out of the tent. Another brigadier, James Shields of Ohio, followed him, giving George a stony look.

  General Butler sat silently through this exchange. “Divide and conquer,” he said. “That’s Old Zach’s policy. Set the Democrats to quarreling with each other.”

  “It seems to be working beautifully,” George said.

  “There’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it, as long as the old son of a bitch is the commanding general. Why didn’t Polk sack him after he let the Mexicans get away from Resaca de la Palma?”

  “The Whig newspapers would have crucified him,” George said. “He’s not Andrew Jackson. He has no military reputation.”

  Two weeks later, the volunteers selected for the march on Monterrey finally departed from the Camargo camp. General Stapleton and a regiment of Texas cavalry brought up the rear of the column, which included about four hundred mules. Behind him in camp they left six thousand disgruntled volunteers, who continued to sicken and die at an appalling rate. So far, all General Stapletón had done was preside at funerals. With the army short of wood for coffins, the dead men were simply wrapped in their blankets and buried in shallow unmarked graves in the thick brush and stunted trees the Mexicans called chaparral. Hannibal had been shocked by the way no one even bothered to say a prayer over them.

  The march through the dry desert country was hard going. Too many of the men emptied their canteens early and were soon desperately thirsty. They passed through a half dozen white-walled little towns that were completely deserted. “I wonder where the people have gone?” George said as they unpacked the mules and began the tedious process of camping for the night in the desert cold.

  “I thinks they figure it’s a lot healthier in the desert than it is anywhere near them Texas Rangers,” Hannibal said. “Them boys can’t wait to start killin’ Mexicans. All they talk about is gettin’ even for the Alamo.”

  George was just beginning to get acquainted with the Texans. They were all tough-looking men. Their colonel was Jack Hays, an undersized, boyish-looking officer with a morose beardless face. Like his men, he carried a rifle strapped to his saddle and two Colt revolvers in holsters on his hips plus a wicked-looking fifteen-inch steel bowie knife on his belt.

  The next day, in one of the deserted villages, the Texans dismounted and went through the houses. Out of one they dragged a short, mustachioed Mexican who was shaking with fever—or with fear. Dangling from his waist was a lariat that George assumed he used to round up cattle or sheep. Hays spoke rapidly to the man in Spanish while the Texans crowded around him.

  “He says he was sick and couldn’t run away,” Hays said with a nasty grin.

  “Let’s give him a runnin’ start now, Colonel,” one of the men said.

  Hays spoke to the Mexican in Spanish again. The man started running for the chaparral. As George watched with disbelief, the Texans hefted their rifles and took aim at him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” George said, riding between them and the fugitive.

  “What does it look like, General?” Hays said. “Get out of the way.”

  “That’s a civilian. We don’t shoot civilians!” George shouted.

  “He ain’t no civilian,” Hays said. “He’s a vaquero.”

  He spurred his horse around George, aimed at the Mexican, and fired. The man was a good two hundred yards away by now. He threw up his hands and toppled to the ground.

  “You son of a bitch! I’m going to have you arrested,” George said.

  “Blow it out your ass, General,” Hays said. The Texans laughed uproariously and rode away. George spurred his horse over to the Mexican. He was dead. The bullet had gone through the back of his head. Hannibal hovered anxiously beside him. “Careful, General. Them boys just as soon shoot you.”

  In a rage, George rode to the head of the column and reported the incident to Major General Butler. He grimaced and wiped his sweaty face and neck with a red bandanna. “Before you got to camp, the army’s quartermaster, Colonel Truman Cross, went out for a ride. They found him two days later with his head bashed in, a lariat around his chest. He’d run into a vaquero—one of them rope-slingin’ Mexican cowboys. Those fellows can pull you off a horse and kill you in ten seconds.”

  Butler sighed and gave George a look that made him feel about ten years old. “Fightin’ Mexicans is a lot like fightin’ Indians, General. They don’t play by the rules and that inclines our boys to do the same thing. I fought the Creeks under old Andy Jackson. A lot of bad things was done on both sides. It’s better not to think about it.”

  “I don’t agree with you. I’m still going to report Hays to General Taylor.”

  “Go ahead. Just remember, he fought Indians too.”

  That night, they camped outside another deserted town. Sentries were posted, latrines were dug. But the volunteers’ sentries did not take their jobs seriously. They let men wander into the town and the surrounding chaparral. As the camp bedded down, there was a cry of anguish from the dark tangle of thorny brush and stunted trees. Lighting a torch from a campfire, George led Hannibal and a party of ten Ohioans into the forest. They found two volunteers with their throats cut. They had probably preferred to relieve themselves in the chaparral rather than in the smelly shallow latrines.

  One was still alive. He gazed at George and tried to say “Mother.” But no sound came from his severed vocal chords as he died.

  “Lord have mercy on us,” Hannibal muttered.

  “Sons of bitches!” one Ohioan shouted. He fired his gun into the surrounding darkness. The others joined him.

  “Cease fire!” George said: “You’ll have the whole division in here shooting at each other. Carry them back to camp. We’ll bury them in the morning.”

  At the town of Cerralvo, about forty miles from Monterrey, they found the rest of the army waiting for them. George was still inclined to report Hays to General Taylor. But he found himself in a conclave of fellow generals, listening to Taylor predict that there would be no real fighting in Monterrey. He had picked up a rumor that Santa Anna was in Mexico City, taking over the government.

  “Doesn’t that mean peace, Senator—I mean, General?” Taylor asked George. “I understand the president slipped this fellow into Mexico to cut a deal.”

  “We hope so,” George said.

  “Well, just in case Polk’s wrong, I want the columns to close up from here to Monterrey. We’ve had a few brushes with Mexican cavalry. They ran away when our Texas fellows went after them.”

  The general had another regiment of Texas cavalry at the head of his column. He chuckled and gazed admiringly as a group of them swaggered past. “Those fellows are somethin’. They went through the houses of every town we hit, lookin’ for loot. Said they didn’t find enough to stick on a single bowie knife. I wish I had another thousand of those boys. I wouldn’t worry about the Mexican cavalry.”

  George decided not to mention the death of the vaquero. In close formation, the army slogged uphill through a much more fruitful countryside toward Monterrey. The blasting heat of the desert vanished. Groves of ebony and brazilwood lined the road, interspersed with fields of silk-ripe corn and fat melons. The volunteers did not hesitate to sample this produce, until a messenger from General Taylor curtly ordered them to stop breaking ranks and keep up with the head of the column.

  On the fourth day, in the far distance appeared the blue line of the Sierra Madre Mountains, which divided northern Mexico from the rest of the nation. Monterrey nestled in the foothills of these awesome peaks. The next day, September 19, they finally saw the city in the distance—white, flat-roofed houses built in irregular rectangles along narrow str
eets dominated by a cathedral looming over a central plaza. On the northern edge of the city stood a huge building with weather-blackened walls. As the Americans came down the road, black smoke puffed from this ominous looking fort. Three cannonballs hurtled toward the intruders. One struck about fifty yards ahead of General Taylor and bounced high over his head. It began to look as if General Santa Anna and his friends were not quite ready to talk peace with the Americans.

  Before the end of the day, a dour Taylor called a council of war. Texas ranger scouts and West Point engineers had been reconnoitering. They had come back with grim news. Monterrey was a “perfect Gibraltar” ringed by forts on the north side. The Mexicans had over forty cannon and seven thousand regulars inside the city, supported by another three thousand armed civilians. Suddenly Old Zach’s decision to leave half his army at Camargo did not look very brilliant. But he artfully blamed it all on President Polk.

  “It looks as if Polk’s man, Santa Anna, is pulling one of his standard double crosses,” the general said. “He’s taken over the government and rushed reinforcements to Monterrey with orders to fight to the death.”

  Taylor’s West Point engineers had found a route around the city. The old Indian fighter proceeded to violate one of the fundamental rules of war. He divided his army in half, gave most of the regulars to General Worth, and ordered him to circle Monterrey by night and attack the city from the south. Taylor and the volunteers would stage a diversion on the north side.

  “Aren’t you worried about a sortie from the city, General?” George said. “If that Mexican general’s any good, he could tear either half of our army to pieces.”

  “Mexicans don’t like to fight in the open,” Taylor snapped, making it clear that he was not interested in advice from amateur generals.

  The next morning at eight o‘clock, the rattle of muskets and the boom of cannon rolled across Monterrey as Worth’s men began their attack. At ten o’clock, Taylor sent his regulars forward with a vague order to “take them little forts down there with the bayonet if you think you can do it.” As Brigadier General Stapleton and the rest of the army watched in dismay, the little forts, aided by several larger ones, erupted in a savage cross fire of grapeshot and small arms that left dozens of blue-coated Americans sprawled on the brown earth. As they reached the outlying streets of the town, they were met with blasts of musketry from Mexicans in loopholed houses and on sandbagged roofs.

  A rattled Taylor ordered General Stapleton, in command of a brigade of volunteers from Mississippi and Tennessee, to rescue the regulars. As they moved out, George found Hannibal beside him.

  “This isn’t your fight.”

  “I volunteered for the whole war, General,” Hannibal said. “I done bought these from some Texas fellows.” He slapped two Colt pistols on his hips.

  Emerging from a cornfield, George ordered his men into line for an assault. A cannonball from a nearby Mexican fort hissed through the Tennessee ranks. It tore off one man’s head, another man’s arm, disemboweled a third man, and wreaked similar havoc on four others, splattering blood and gore over their companions. A wail of terror rippled through the ranks. “Lord Jesus have mercy on us all,” Hannibal said.

  “Let’s show them how Americans fight a war!” George shouted, pointing his sword toward Monterrey. He felt no fear. Was his father’s spirit sustaining him?

  The Tennesseans roared a response and surged forward. But more cannon fire and a blizzard of musket balls cut terrible gaps in their ranks. The red-shirted Mississippians on their right did not seem to be suffering as much, and George angled the advance in their direction. By now the battlefield was full of drifting smoke. When George reached the place where he thought the regulars were hanging on, he found they were separated by several streets of well-defended houses, and both brigades were stranded. Muskets and cannon blazed at them from all directions.

  Just ahead was a brown-walled building bristling with cannon. Off to its left George saw a company of American regulars on a rooftop, firing at it, forcing the artillerymen to take cover. “Let’s take that fort!” George said.

  The commander of the Mississippians was an ex—West Pointer around George’s age named Jefferson Davis. “Lead the way, General,” he said. “Anything’s better than lyin’ here gettin’ killed.”

  George leaped to his feet and lunged into the smoke. The howling Mississippians followed him. Some of the Tennessee regiment came with them. Bullets hissed around General Stapleton, men went down, but they reached the doors of the building, smashed them open with their muskets, and charged inside. A dozen Mexicans on the first floor dropped to their knees and surrendered. The Mississippians surged through the building; gunshots quickly ended the resistance of a few holdouts. Hannibal appeared with pistols in both hands. “You done captured yourself a fort, General!” he shouted, sweat streaming down his face.

  Out of the gunsmoke materialized Zachary Taylor himself leading a brigade of Kentucky and Ohio volunteers. With him was General Butler. Taylor congratulated George for capturing the fort: “This clears the way into the city. Leave a hundred men to hold this and follow me.”

  George marshaled his battered Tennesseans and Mississippians; they did not look as if they had much fight left in them. But they followed Taylor and Butler into the gunsmoke. In a matter of minutes, they were stopped by sheets of musketry and not a few blasts of grapeshot from barricades across several streets. More bullets came from their rear, where a small fort had been bypassed.

  General Butler cried out and went down with blood gushing from a bullet in his thigh. The colonel in command of the Ohio regiment toppled with a bullet in his chest. Taylor exposed himself recklessly to the flying lead, trying to find a way around these new obstacles—in vain. He stood there, cursing, baffled and befuddled.

  “This is slow suicide!” Colonel Jefferson Davis said to George. “What the hell does Old Zach think he’s doing?”

  “It’s supposed to be a diversion,” George said.

  “Maybe he should have brought along a dictionary,” Davis said. “Tell him to get us out of here.”

  Determined to equal Taylor’s nonchalance under fire, George strolled through the bullets and suggested a withdrawal. “My men have taken terrible casualties. They’re starting to unravel.”

  Taylor nodded glumly. “We’ve done all we can for one day. I hope Worth has put our losses to good use.”

  Carrying General Butler and numerous other wounded, the Americans ingloriously fled the environs of Monterrey. Back at their campgrounds, George found bewildered, shaken soldiers huddling around campfires, exchanging wild rumors. “People sayin’ we lost half our army, General. We goin’ to retreat?” Hannibal asked.

  George visited the wounded Butler. He damned Taylor in sulfurous terms. “He’s thrown away a thousand good men in three uncoordinated attacks, without bothering to find out shit about the enemy’s defenses,” he raged.

  As darkness fell, the cries of the wounded echoed across the battlefield. A reporter from the New York Herald rushed up to George. “General, I’m Tom Hamer. I’ve got orders from my editor to keep an eye on you. From what I hear, you’re the only man who showed any spunk out there. Capturing that fort …”

  George had no difficulty making the necessary connections. Caroline’s relations with the New York Herald were excellent. She fed them a stream of leaks and Washington gossip. This was her quid pro quo. But he found himself filled with loathing for the idea of rising to fame on the bodies of the dead.

  “I’m sorry, Tom. I’ve got work to do. I left a lot of wounded men out there on that battlefield.”

  Hamer was openmouthed. “General, I just need a few paragraphs …”

  “Talk to Colonel Davis of the Mississippi Rifles.”

  George summoned Hannibal and a dozen Tennessee soldiers, and they followed him onto the darkened battlefield. In a few hours, they brought back two dozen wounded men and deposited them at the entrance to the army’s dressing station. Outside it i
n the lamplight, George noticed a pale pile of refuse. What was it?

  Looking closer, he realized the pile was severed arms and legs. “The saws’ll be goin’ all night, for sure,” Hannibal said. Amputation was a standard treatment for arm and leg wounds, which easily became infected.

  On his third trip into the darkness, George heard someone weeping. He walked toward the sound and in the starlight discovered Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant sobbing beside the body of a blue-uniformed regular.

  “Lieutenant Grant,” George said. “Can we help you? I’ve got a dozen men with me.”

  Grant shook his head. “Lieutenant Hoskins is dead, General. He was my best friend at the Military Academy. No matter how hard I try, I don’t think I’m going to like this war.”

  “Amen to that,” Hannibal said.

  THREE

  “I’M BEGINNING TO THINK JAMES almost hates me,” Sarah Polk said, gazing out at rain-drenched Washington. The Capitol loomed in the gray distance, its stunted wooden dome a kind of reproach to pretensions to grandeur.

  “Why do you say such a thing?” Caroline asked.

  “Can you blame him, really? I’ve inflicted this ordeal on him. Oh, my dear friend, if I didn’t have you, I think I’d be a madwoman by now. Or an addict to laudanum.”

  It was March 25, 1847. The city was swirling with rumors that General Zachary Taylor had fought another great battle in Mexico. The war was ten months old and peace seemed as elusive as ever. George’s letters from Mexico were a litany of disillusion. Capturing Monterrey after three days of bloody fighting, General Taylor had turned politician and agreed to an eight-week truce with the defeated Mexican general. He had allowed him to march his army out of the city with all their weapons, on a vague promise not to serve again in the war.

  Once more, the newspapers had glorified Taylor, portraying him in the front ranks with his men, ignoring enemy bullets, calling’ for an ax to smash down the door of a Monterrey house. Not a word was said about his horrendous casualties or his assumption of the right to negotiate a truce with the Mexicans instead of defeating them as thoroughly as possible and letting the president and the secretary of state handle the political side of the war.