Although Taylor seethed at what he termed a political assault on his rear by his superiors, he still had to attend to his military responsibility. Word came to him from General Wool at Saltillo that a sizable Mexican force led by General Antonio López de Santa Anna was moving northward from San Luis de Potosí toward his position. Although Taylor did not believe that an army could traverse the 150 miles of desert that dominated the road from San Luis up to Saltillo, he responded to Wool’s news by leaving Victoria for Saltillo on January 16, 1847, with an escort of the First Mississippi and two artillery batteries.52
Arriving in Saltillo on February 2, Taylor surveyed the situation. To improve the morale of his troops and to ascertain Mexican whereabouts, Taylor sent the bulk of his force, including the Rifles, twenty miles southward to Agua Nueva on the tableland at the foot of the Sierra Madre. To Varina, Davis described the location as “a beautiful and healthy position.” He informed her that “we came expecting a host and battle, have found solitude and externally peace.” “We are waiting,” he explained, “only action or such excitement as reconciles man to repose.”53
At this point General Taylor still held to his conviction that his enemy could not cross the wasteland before him. He even disregarded his engineers’ opinion that Agua Nueva could be easily bypassed by Mexican cavalry, cutting off the 4,000 Americans there, including Taylor. Although Old Rough-and-Ready did not have a clear sense of his foe’s location or intention, his soldiers had no doubt about him. A company commander in the Rifles, who back at Camargo had expressed misgivings about the general, now characterized him as “a good man and a good officer—The army has great confidence in him.” On the march from Monterrey to Saltillo one of his soldiers saw the commanding general ride by with a troop of horsemen and described the image that endeared Old Rough-and-Ready to his men: “Do you see, at their head, a plain-looking gentleman, mounted upon a brown horse, having upon his head a Mexican sombrero, dressed in a brown, olive-colored, loose-frock-coat, gray pants, wool socks, and shoes; beneath the frock appears the scabbard of a sword; he has the eye of an eagle, and every lineament of his countenance is expressive of honesty, and a calm determined mind.” To his troops, confident that they “can not be whipped by a Mexican army,” Taylor was one with them, indomitable and imperturbable.54
Battle of Buena Vista.
From Papers of Jefferson Davis, III, with permission of the LSU Press
That confidence in themselves and in their commanding general was critical, for Taylor quickly found himself and his army in a spot little short of desperate. By February 20 no doubt remained. Santa Anna was just south of Agua Nueva, advancing toward Saltillo with almost 20,000 men, a force more than three times the size of Taylor’s legions. And in that small force only the First Mississippi and some batteries had ever before seen combat. But though Taylor was basically isolated, far from any reinforcements, and defeat could mean the literal destruction of his entire army, he never hesitated. Old Rough-and-Ready would stand and fight. Unlike Monterrey, this contest would not take place in an urban area but in open country. Still, as always, the topography would be critical in the planning and flow of battle.
The ground that the Mexicans and Americans fought over resembled the landscape on an arid moon where the crust had been tormented and torn by violent shocks and explosions. Three miles beyond Saltillo the main road south passed by the Buena Vista hacienda, then bore right, or west, as it traversed a narrow pass, La Angostura, before settling down for a run of around fifteen miles to Agua Nueva. Immediately to the west of the road, a web of sharp, ragged gullies ripped the ground, and around a half mile farther west a wall of mountains rose up. East of the road several plateaus, including two broad ones, peppered with rocks and desert shrubs, reached out for about a mile and sloped up toward the Sierra Madre, which barricaded the eastern edge of the area. Rocky and at times wide and deep ravines hacked the earth between and among the plateaus.
Having ridden through and thought about this forbidding landscape, General Wool decided that artillery well placed in the narrow pass supported by infantry would bring the Mexican advance to a dead stop and protect Saltillo. The gullies on the American right he correctly judged impenetrable for cavalry and practically so for any sizable body of infantry. With the plateaus on his left angling in a basically east–west rather than north–south direction, and often cleft by ravines, Wool could not envision the Mexican army making a sustained move that way either. Thus, to get to Saltillo, Santa Anna would have to come straight at the Americans in La Angostura, where, Wool was confident, he would be thrown back. Zachary Taylor basically accepted Wool’s defensive tactical plan.
When Santa Anna reached Agua Nueva on February 21, he was disappointed that his enemy had fallen back toward Saltillo. Still, he saw more opportunity for his side in the terrain in front of him than Wool did. The gullies were out, and he certainly did not believe he could drive straight through La Angostura and onto more level ground where his numbers might prove decisive. An advance across the ravines would be difficult to maintain, but at their extreme eastern end the plateaus left the ravines largely behind, making for a slender stretch of basically open ground almost at the base of the Sierra Madre. If Santa Anna could get a combined infantry-cavalry force far enough along that route before the Americans realized what he was about, then he could turn their position at La Angostura, fall upon the rear, and capture the supply depot at Saltillo. Simply put, he could smash Taylor’s army and cut off any escape.
Santa Anna decided to strike immediately, though his men were exhausted and hungry after their long, debilitating trudge across the desert. The Mexican general did not want to give the Americans time to strengthen their defenses. Issuing a proclamation calling for the expulsion of the invaders, Santa Anna strove to spur his troops to a supreme effort. He ordered two divisions east toward the Sierra Madre to undertake the flanking operation. At the same time, to occupy the Americans and keep their attention away from his main strike, he mounted a diversion straight up the road toward La Angostura. Both assaults would have artillery support. After a cold, wet night on February 22, the twenty-third dawned with a storm-cleansed, bright sky. At 8 a.m. the Mexican attack opened the Battle of Buena Vista or, to the Mexicans, the Battle of La Angostura.
That morning Jefferson Davis and the Rifles were in Saltillo with Taylor. Late in the afternoon of the twenty-second, Taylor, convinced that a major engagement would not take place that day, had left Wool in charge and returned with the First Mississippi to Saltillo to ensure that his supplies were adequately protected. Satisfied that the garrison could fend off any Mexican cavalry attacks and secure the army’s provisions, Taylor planned to head back to the scene of the impending battle at first light. After a few hours’ sleep the general, along with most of the First Mississippi, started south. Colonel Davis had left behind in Saltillo one of his captains with two companies to defend the supply depot. And that afternoon they did beat off a feeble effort by a band of Mexican cavalry.
As Old Rough-and-Ready and his entourage reached the Buena Vista hacienda around 9 a.m. on the twenty-third, they met the pandemonium raging in the American army. To this point the fight had not gone well for Taylor’s men. Initially, Wool reacted decisively and successfully to the Mexican thrust toward his left. When the Mexican move was discovered, Wool dispatched additional units to the threatened point, and in fierce fighting the Americans halted the advance. Then, in the fog of combat—first-time combat for the American infantry regiments locked in this struggle—confusion and seemingly contradictory orders caused the commander of the Second Indiana to order a retreat that opened the gates for the Mexicans. Taking advantage of this gap in the American line, Santa Anna pushed his troops forward. His plan seemed to be on the verge of succeeding, with the Americans fleeing and the avenue around their left flank and to their rear broad and inviting. By the time Taylor appeared on the battlefield, the Mexican infantry was pressing down the broad plateau that would take it behind
La Angostura to Buena Vista hacienda.
With Americans on the run, Old Rough-and-Ready confronted a deteriorating, even desperate situation. According to some accounts, General Wool counseled withdrawal. Taylor refused, fearing that with his mostly green troops any general retreat could turn into an uncontrollable rout. He would stand. In this instance Taylor’s calmness, courage, and solidity were as important as his soldiers’ confidence in him. He did not rattle, much less break.
Davis and the Rifles hesitated near the hacienda only long enough to fill their canteens, and following Taylor’s instructions, deployed on the northern plateau to meet the Mexicans flooding toward the American rear. As he ordered his men to advance toward the enemy, Davis to little avail also implored straggling and retreating soldiers to join his band, but he did get Wool to promise to send help as soon as possible. Despite the odds—his eight companies, numbering fewer than 400 men against at least a full division and possibly as many as 4,000 Mexicans—Colonel Davis never wavered. “No one could have failed to perceive the hazard,” Davis observed in his report. Attacking forthwith he believed absolutely essential, at “whatever sacrifice.” He pushed his red-shirted troops forward at double-quick time until they came within rifle range of their foe. At that point, he called a halt and then ordered his men to “advance firing.” With Davis leading on horseback, the Rifles screaming a “loud yell of defiance, which rang on the ear more like the roar of angry lions than the shout of men … rushed forward” under what one officer called “one of the heaviest fires I ever saw.” Not to be deterred, the Mississippians successfully navigated an abrupt ravine in their path and continued to pour a torrent of lead, twenty-one rounds of cartridges, upon the “close and dense rank” of the Mexicans. The powerful shock of this charge crumpled the Mexican onslaught. The American rear had been saved, for the moment.55
The danger had not evaporated yet. The collision with the Mexicans had cost the Rifles dearly; most of the casualties suffered in the battle occurred during this bloody fighting. The colonel himself suffered a painful wound when a musket ball pierced his right foot near the ankle, driving shards of brass from his shattered spur and bits of his sock into his flesh. Even so, he refused to leave the field, having his wound wrapped while he remained on horseback. Aware of his exposed location, however, he pulled his regiment back to a stronger defensive position. As the Mississippians withdrew in good order, the Third Indiana came up to reinforce them. At this juncture some refugees from units previously overrun and scattered also appeared.56
Almost immediately all of these Americans found themselves facing still another grave crisis. Stymied, Santa Anna attempted to regain the initiative by sending an additional brigade of cavalry to his right flank to act as catalyst for yet another try to get behind his enemy. As Colonel Davis peered to his front, he saw about 400 yards distant “a body of richly caparisoned lancers,” in fact, about 2,000 of them. These troops, in Davis’s words, “came forward rapidly and in beautiful order—the files and ranks so closed, as to look like a solid mass of men and horses.”57
Davis had to act quickly, for a thunderous cavalry charge could overrun his position and plunge straight to the Saltillo road, along the way crushing the American left and exposing the rear. Davis’s men had never before confronted a massive cavalry charge, and he did not think he had time to form the classic infantry defense against men on horseback, the hollow square. Instead, he deployed his forces in what became the famous V, the Indiana troops making up the right arm and the Rifles the left, with an artillery piece on their left end. Davis styled his formation “a reentering angle,” which would permit his riflemen to catch the Mexican cavalry in a converging fire as it bore down on the American position. With his troops stationed as he wanted, Davis repeatedly urged them not to shoot until the enemy was almost in their midst. In his battle report Davis praised the steadiness of his soldiers “as they stood at shouldered arms waiting an attack.” As the Mexican horsemen approached, their speed decreased from a gallop to a trot until at 30 to 80 yards, depending upon the account, they came to a walk. Perhaps the unusual alignment in front of them gave them pause, or perhaps the slowdown was simply momentary before a racing charge. At that moment a few shots rang out from the American side, then both sides of the V hurled “a volley so destructive, that the mass yielded to the blow, and the survivors fled.” Now artillery from the middle plateau rained shot and shell on the bloodied lancers. The Rifles in conjunction with the Indianans and the artillery had shattered the cavalry charge. For a second time the Saltillo road had been secured.58
With this turn of events the scene of heaviest action shifted to the center—but not before a respite caused by a brief rainstorm, and by a Mexican stratagem of using a white flag to help extricate troops that after the failure of the cavalry attack were trapped against the eastern mountains. Thinking the Mexicans in retreat, Taylor ordered a general American advance across the main plateau. Santa Anna was not yet through. He too directed an all-out assault on the American center. Once more the two sides became entangled in bloody combat, with the outcome seemingly hanging in the balance, but the superbly handled American artillery added immensely to the punishment inflicted upon the Mexicans. Then, late in the afternoon, the Mississippi and Indiana Regiments made it across the rugged ravines and joined what General Wool called “the hottest as well as the most critical part of the action,” protecting the crucial artillery batteries from Mexican infantry. Davis proudly reported that even after their arduous day, the Rifles “advanced upon the enemy with the alacrity and eagerness of men fresh to the combat.” When night fell, the exhausted men of both sides practically dropped in position. The Americans had recovered the ground they had lost on the main plateau, and all expected the fighting to resume on the morrow.59
First Mississippi Regiment at Buena Vista (watercolor by Samuel Chamberlain).
San Jacinto Museum of History Association (photo credit i6.1)
The morning of February 24 revealed, instead, that Santa Anna had completely withdrawn, leaving the field to Taylor and his little army. The struggle had resulted in a significant American victory. Triumph at Buena Vista ensured not only the security of Taylor’s force, but also the American occupation of much of northern Mexico, and in addition greatly enhanced the heroic image and political appeal of Old Rough-and-Ready. Yet Taylor’s role at Buena Vista was much the same as at Monterrey. He had not really directed the battle, but presided over the battlefield and left many of the critical decisions and deployments to his subordinates. And again on the regimental and battery level, a number of American officers, including Colonel Jefferson Davis, turned in excellent performances under extraordinarily trying conditions.
After the fighting halted on the twenty-third, Colonel Davis went to a field tent for “surgical aid” and from there was transported by wagon to the hospital that had been set up in Saltillo, where he arrived at about 10 p.m. Writing to Varina two days later, he described his wounded foot as “painful but … by no means dangerous.” Although the injury never threatened to require amputation of foot or leg, it still hobbled him. For two years he had to use crutches to get around, and for three more the afflicted foot at times caused him extreme pain. During that period the bone exfoliated, and the shattered pieces either worked themselves out or were removed surgically, each generating intense anguish. This battlefield wound would occasionally bother Davis throughout his life.60
Jefferson Davis was enormously proud of his regiment and himself, though he always touted his men. At Buena Vista the Rifles suffered the heaviest casualties of any unit, thirty-nine killed and fifty-six wounded, or almost one-quarter of their strength on the field, underscoring that they had been in the maelstrom most of the day. In Davis’s official report he recorded, “my regiment equalled—it was impossible to exceed—my expectations.” With pride he later talked about “that terrible engine of power, disciplined Mississippi courage.…” As for himself, he knew that General Taylor thought his performan
ce exemplary. In his official report Taylor left no doubt: “[Davis’s] Distinguished coolness and gallantry at the head of his regiment … entitle him to the particular notice of the government.” Davis’s subordinates in the First Mississippi hailed his leadership as decisive, courageous, and effective. Major Bradford summed up their collective opinion: “I am pleased to say that I observed with pleasure the devotion you manifested towards your Regiment & your country.…”61
From that time until his death more than four decades later, Davis never doubted that the Rifles had saved the army, both in their initial charge and then in the defense. He always believed that his V-formation had been both a brilliant innovation and a critically important deployment. Whether or not brilliant, it indisputably showed imagination and decisiveness in an acute emergency. Without question, those two actions on the northern plateau saved the American rear at crucial junctures, though it cannot be proven that they were mostly responsible for the American victory. The Third Indiana had an instrumental part in the second fight. Also momentous was the afternoon contest on the central plateau, in which the First Mississippi significantly participated. Serious recent students of the battle point to the artillery as making the real difference for the Americans, and, of course, those guns helped Jefferson Davis. Throughout the day the field artillery, superbly handled by regular officers like Captain Braxton Bragg, who would reappear in Davis’s future, provided mobile and ferocious firepower all over the field. The Mexicans could not match it. At the same time, the Rifles and their colonel performed splendidly and contributed conspicuously to the American triumph.62
Jefferson Davis, American Page 21
