The sailors and marines encamped on the Plaza, while the dragoons and rifleros distributed themselves in small companies throughout the pueblo. The plundering soon began. Downey described the scene. “No sooner were their quarters assigned than parties were out, all over town, foraging. And woe betide the house that had no occupants for it was sure to be ransacked from clue to earring, and everything that was useful or ornamental carried off to the barracks.” A number of Angelenos later filed official complaints of stolen property. One woman testified that she fled so quickly she had no time to secure her important documents. “All I could do was to lock the doors of my house.” But the Americans broke in and “carried off everything I had in it, including the title papers, thus leaving me today without any safeguard to protect my property rights.” The principal object of the looters, however, was wine and aguardiente. “Stroll from quarters to quarters, and you would see drunken men on all sides,” Downey observed. “Nor were the men alone in this spree, the officers had all imbibed their juice, save only the Old General and the Commodore.” Marine Lieutenant Henry Watson was disgusted. “We have marched one hundred and fifty miles, fought two battles in both of which [we] were victorious, taken the city, and are now in the wildest scene of confusion, for nearly one half of the army are drunk.”
DESPITE THE LOSS of Los Angeles, the Californios retained the advantage of mobility. Walter Colton, editor of the Californian of Monterey, explained the situation to his readers. “The forces of the Commodore were on foot, and of course unable to follow up their brilliant successes. The enemy were mounted, and might have held the country around. If attacked, they had only to retreat, and return again on the retiring footsteps of their foes.” To secure the conquest, Stockton required Frémont and his mounted California Battalion. He had hoped to link up with them before the final assault on the pueblo, but as John Griffin recorded in his diary on January 11, there was “nothing heard from Frémont.”
In the early afternoon of that same day, Frémont and the California Battalion entered the northern reaches of the San Fernando Valley, some forty miles northwest of Los Angeles. Within minutes his advance guard was met by two mounted Californios under a flag of truce. They had come from their headquarters, carrying a message similar to the one conveyed to Stockton a week before, proposing an armistice and negotiations. A few minutes later another rider arrived, a Frenchman from Los Angeles, carrying a dispatch for Frémont from General Kearny. “We are in possession of this place with a force of marines and sailors,” Kearny had written. “Join us as soon as you can.” The note ended with a request: “Please acknowledge the receipt of this.” But Frémont chose not to respond. Neither did he rush to Los Angeles to provide Stockton and Kearny with the mounted support they needed. Instead, he elected to act on his own initiative, pursuing the offer of negotiations with the Californios. It was a most extraordinary thing for a junior officer to do, but for Frémont, entirely in character.
Directing his men into camp on the grounds of Mission San Fernando, Frémont dispatched José de Jesús Pico, the captured alcalde of San Luis Obispo, to the encampment of the defeated Californio force, holed up in the Verdugo Hills, northeast of Los Angeles. To Commandante Flores, his cousin Don Andrés, and other Californio leaders, Don Jesús recounted his personal story of Frémont’s mercy as proof of his intention of “conquering by clemency and justice.” Historian Justin Smith best summarized Frémont’s transformation in his classic history of the Mexican-American War: “The arch-ruffian of the Bear cult reappeared as a fairy godmother to save and bless the Californians.”
Flores wasn’t buying it. Stockton had vowed to shoot him on sight, and he was understandably reluctant to trust the word of a junior officer with a history of violent confrontation with Mexicans and Californios. Flores instead decided that the time had come for strategic retreat to Mexico, and he urged Andrés Pico and other Angeleno officers to join him in flight. The Californios had expected this. They told Flores they were staying. Not because they thought they could win. “I no longer flattered myself that we might attain a victory,” Pico admitted. Fewer than one hundred and twenty poorly armed Californios remained to face more than a thousand well-armed Americans. “I nevertheless wished to give the last impulse to save the country, and to guarantee the lives and property of the inhabitants.” He sent his cousin back to Frémont with the message that he was ready to negotiate a capitulation “as long as it was honorable in every sense of the word.” Flores was angry about Pico’s decision, but he signed a document officially turning over command of the Californio forces. Then he departed for Sonora with a party of some thirty Mexican officers.
The following morning a delegation of Californios appeared at Frémont’s camp to open negotiations. “We are ready to abandon this strife,” they declared. They had attempted to negotiate a truce with Stockton, they said, but “we were taunted as cowards and told we [would] dare not strike a blow for our country.” Their course throughout the war had been directed solely by the dictates of honor. And rather than accept Stockton’s disgraceful terms, “they would take to the hills and make a guerrilla war of it.” Don Jesús, however, had assured them that Frémont would treat them honorably. In which case “we agree to submit and live peaceably under the laws established, but our leaders must be included in the amnesty. Otherwise we will stand by them, see our ranchos burnt, and sacrifice our lands for them.”
This corresponded perfectly with the course Frémont had already adopted. As a gesture of goodwill, he declared a cessation of hostilities and invited the Californios to bring their wounded to Mission San Fernando, where his surgeon would attend them. That afternoon three officers of the California Battalion sat down with José Antonio Carrillo and Agustín Olvera, former secretary of the California assembly, to negotiate the terms. At Pico’s suggestion, they agreed to meet the following morning at Cahuenga Pass to sign the agreement. The choice of location was highly symbolic. For Californios it was a place of honor, the site where they had defeated Governors Victoria and Micheltorena in defense of their independence.
On the morning of January 13, 1847, in an old adobe within sight of Río de Porciúncula, Andrés Pico, in his capacity as commander in chief of the California forces, and John C. Frémont, claiming the title of “Military Commandant of the Territory of California,” signed what became known as the Treaty of Cahuenga. The Californios agreed to surrender their artillery and public arms to the Americans and “return peaceably to their homes, conforming to the laws and regulations of the United States, and not again take up arms during the war between the United States and Mexico, but will assist in placing the country in a state of peace and tranquility.” The Americans agreed that until a treaty of peace was signed, ending the war with Mexico, Californios would enjoy equal rights and privileges with citizens of the United States; that they would be permitted to leave the country “without let or hindrance;” that they would not be required to take an oath of allegiance; and “that they shall be guaranteed protection of life and property, whether on parole or otherwise.” This final guarantee resolved a major sticking point, Stockton’s insistence that by rising up against Gillespie’s tyranny Californios had violated their parole of honor, a capital offense punishable by death under the law of nations. Just in case that language was not clear enough, a supplemental article to the treaty explicitly stated that “the paroles of all officers . . . are by this foregoing capitulation cancelled, and every condition of said paroles from and after this date are of no further force and effect, and all prisoners of both parties are hereby released.”
A courier carried a copy of the treaty to the pueblo that afternoon. It was Frémont’s first communication with his superior officers since his arrival in southern California. “I have the honor to report to you,” Frémont wrote to Kearny, that the Californios “have this day laid down their arms and surrendered to my command.” Both Kearny and Stockton were shocked by the treaty’s liberal concessions but even more so by the junior officer
who negotiated it behind their backs. But they decided that the best course was to endorse it. Other Americans remained skeptical. “The junior officers have opinions of their own,” wrote surgeon John Griffin, “and like all Americans will express them. They are decidedly opposed to the treaty and the terms granted to the Californians as not a man among them believes it will be observed on the part of the Californians with good faith.” This would not be the end of the conflict, Griffin predicted. “The people will rise again.”
In a letter to his brother, exiled governor Pío Pico, Don Andrés gave expression to his own sentiments. “This was the end, Excellent Sir, of the struggle carried on by the inhabitants of California against the invaders of our Country.” In more than four months of struggle they had upheld the honor of the country “by dint of great sacrifices,” and without any other assistance “than that of Divine Providence, who seemed to protect the sacred cause that was heroically defended by a handful of men who spring to arms to recover their lost liberty.” Those were heartfelt words, and they summarized the thinking of many Angelenos, who believed that despite their losing struggle to maintain their independence, they had vindicated their honor. The fight had been costly in blood and treasure, a toll that might have been avoided if, at San Pedro in August 1846, Stockton had adopted the course Frémont chose at Cahuenga in January 1847. Memories of a harsh occupation, of dead and maimed fathers, husbands, and sons, would continue to haunt Los Angeles for years to come.
•
CHAPTER 11 •
THE GRAB GAME
THE AMERICANS had badly mishandled the first occupation of Los Angeles in August and September of 1846. Establishing order after the reoccupation in January 1847, amid the hostility, resentment, and chaos resulting from several months of armed conflict, promised to be difficult. They needed to proceed with clear rules of operation and clear lines of authority. But American rule began inauspiciously, with a dramatic conflict among the conquerors over who would direct the occupation authority.
Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny had arrived in California with instructions from the secretary of war naming him commander of American ground forces and chief administrator of the military occupation. Commodore Robert F. Stockton, however, had already claimed those roles for himself, and he jealously refused to recognize Kearny’s authority. Reluctantly but quietly, Kearny submitted to Stockton during the operation to retake Los Angeles, but with that task completed he expected naval personnel to retire to their vessels, leaving the Army in control on land. “As long as you are here, you are commander in chief,” he told Stockton. “After you are gone, I will be.”
To reinforce his claim, however, Kearny needed armed might. With the regiment of dragoons severely weakened by its devastating loss at San Pasqual, his only immediate recourse was the California Battalion, commanded by Frémont. Frémont had been conducting operations under the authority of Commodore Stockton of the Navy, but he was a lieutenant colonel in the Army. Kearny was his superior officer, and he expected that Frémont would now come under his command. But when Frémont arrived in Los Angeles with his mounted rifleros, he reported first to Stockton and gave Kearny no indication of his support. Among American officers in the pueblo there was great uncertainty about where Frémont would plant his flag. “There is something going on between General Kearny, Commodore Stockton, and Lieutenant-Colonel Frémont of an unpleasant character which has not yet leaked out,” Marine Lieutenant Henry Watson noted in his journal. That “something” was the fundamental question of who would be in charge of the military occupation of California. It leaked out soon enough and became a matter of public controversy, with serious consequences for the establishment of law and order in Los Angeles.
On the morning of January 16, two days after Frémont’s arrival, Stockton announced the organization of an occupation government for California, with Frémont as governor. Kearny was outraged. “I am informed that you are now engaged in organizing a civil government and appointing officers for it in this Territory,” he wrote to Stockton. “As this duty has been specially assigned to myself by orders of the President of the United States, I have to ask if you have any authority from the President, from the Secretary of the Navy, or from any other channel of the President, to form such government or make such appointments. If you have such authority, and will show it to me, or furnish me with a certified copy of it, I will cheerfully acquiesce in what you are doing. If you have not such authority, I then demand that you cease all further proceeding.” Stockton dashed off a response. “I need say but little more than that which I communicated to you in a conversation at San Diego, that California was conquered and a civil government put into successful operation before your arrival in the Territory.” He ignored Kearny’s demand that he provide a copy of the orders authorizing his assumption of power. In fact, he had none. The conquest of California did not turn on orders or instructions, but on power. And for the moment Stockton had it, in the form of more than a thousand sailors and marines. He concluded his response to Kearny with a twist of the knife. “I will only add that I cannot do anything, nor desist from doing anything, nor alter anything, on your demand—which I will submit to the president and ask for your recall. In the meantime, you will consider yourself suspended from the command of the United States forces in this place.” In the phrase of one naval officer on the scene, Stockton was “playing a grab game.”
Stockton expected that Kearny’s next move would be an order to Frémont “to terminate his connection with me as a volunteer under my command, and to report to him for orders,” and that is precisely what Kearny did, instructing Frémont that from that moment he was to do nothing without Kearny’s explicit authorization. But Frémont responded that he considered Stockton his commanding officer. Since the previous summer, he wrote, Stockton had exercised the functions of military commandant in California. All the operations of the California Battalion took place under cover of that authority. On his arrival in Los Angeles only a few days before, he had found Stockton still exercising command, with all American officers, including Kearny himself, acknowledging his authority. “With great deference to your professional and personal character,” Frémont concluded, “until you and Commodore Stockton adjust between yourselves the question of rank, where I respectfully think the difficulty belongs, I shall have to report and receive orders, as heretofore, from the Commodore.”
Kearny was stunned. If Frémont insisted on pursuing this course, he countered, “he would unquestionably ruin himself”—meaning that Kearny would do everything in his power to destroy the young man’s military career. If, on the other hand, Frémont would take back and destroy the note, he would gladly forget about the whole thing. But Frémont refused. It was a question of honor, he insisted. “I had contracted relations with Commodore Stockton, and I thought it neither right nor politically honorable to withdraw my support.” As one early historian quipped, “there is, or should be, honor even among filibusters.” Others viewed Frémont’s stand as a matter less of honor than of opportunism.
The implications were clear enough for Kearny. “I am not recognized in my official capacity, either by Commodore Stockton or Lieutenant Colonel Frémont, both of whom refuse to obey my orders or the instructions of the President,” he reported to Washington, “and as I have no troops in the country under my authority, excepting a few dragoons, I have no power of enforcing them.” He left for San Diego the following morning, writing to Stockton that he did so to prevent “a collision between us and possibly a civil war in consequence of it.” That was an extraordinary prospect, Americans battling each other over California spoils. But it was something Stockton also foresaw. “I should not only have felt it to be my right, but a matter of imperative duty,” he wrote in justification of his conduct a short time later, “to assert and maintain my authority, if necessary, by a resort to force.”
The fears of violence between the two branches of the American military establishment was not confined to private corresponde
nce. According to one report, Frémont called the officers of the California Battalion together and solicited their support in his opposition to Kearny, “thus trying to incite a civil war,” thought Marine Lieutenant Henry Watson, “for which in my opinion he should be hanged.” Naval surgeon Marius Duvall recorded gossip that the Californios had offered to join Frémont in fighting Kearny. No independent evidence supports that rumor, but Kearny apparently took it seriously. On the eve of his departure from the pueblo, he summoned ranchero Benjamin Davis Wilson to his quarters and requested that he muster a group of armed and mounted American civilians to accompany his small troop of dragoons to San Diego. “Frémont has a large force with him of undisciplined men,” said Kearny, “and I hear all kinds of rumors of his intentions and acts.” Wilson complied, but was appalled at the prospect of an attack by one American commander on another. “I was much surprised,” he later recalled, to find Kearny fearful “of foul play to his person by some of the Frémont party.”
STOCKTON DEPARTED Los Angeles soon after Kearny, leaving Frémont and the California Battalion in control. Frémont established headquarters in Alexander Bell’s two-story adobe mansion, from where he issued a circular proclaiming order and peace restored throughout the country. According to Antonio Coronel, “Frémont deliberately set out to win over the Californios.” He adopted the rancheo costume—pantaloons, sash, and flat-crowned sombrero—and invited local leaders to meet with him at his quarters. Some Angelenos refused—José Antonio Carrillo prominent among them—but others came, often reluctantly. José del Cármen Lugo later recalled receiving a summons from Frémont. He arrived with trepidation, he said, but was immediately put at ease, Frémont flattering his vanity by telling him that when it came to matters on the eastern frontier, everyone insisted that he must consult with the Lugos. Lugo escorted Frémont on a tour of the upper Río Santa Ana countryside, concluding with a visit to San Gabriel, where a ball was held in the American’s honor. “The young women danced and talked with him,” said Lugo, “and he returned to Los Angeles pleased and happy.” Although Coronel and Lugo understood the expediency of Frémont’s policy, they preferred the opportunism of the open palm to the disdain of the closed fist.
Eternity Street Page 19
