Pacific Destiny and Bear Flag Rising

by Dale L. Walker

  As Stockton’s naval bandsmen played “Hail, Columbia” and the infantry square, dragoons, and skirmishers advanced toward the mouth of Flores’ horseshoe, the Californian cannons opened fire and sent round shot bouncing harmlessly toward the American flanks. Stockton halted his army, brought his own fieldpieces forward and answered the fire. The exchange lasted for a quarter-hour before Flores ordered his lancers to charge the front of the enemy square—a foolhardy decision that, as contemporary militarists like to say, “defied all the rules of war.”

  The lancers, ten horsemen wide and three rows deep, thundered toward the square, their long, needle-tipped lances tucked under their armpits. Kearny held his two front ranks of dragoons and marines in check, shouting “Steady! Pick your men, boys!” Then, when the horsemen approached to within a hundred paces, he roared “Fire!” The rifles in the first rank cracked and produced a plume of smoke; instantly Kearny ordered “Front rank, kneel! Rear rank, fire!” The front rank fell to its knees, each man’s bayonet at the ready to meet any horseman attempting to break the square, as the second rank rose, took aim, and fired. The volleys staggered the careening lancers; horses and men tumbled to the ground, upsetting others behind, and by the time the musket smoke cleared, the Californians and several riderless horses were fleeing back toward Flores’ main force.

  Kearny ordered the square forward, and as it lumbered across the mesa, the Californians again charged, this time on the left and right flanks simultaneously. Kearny ordered “Steady! Keep your ranks! Give ’em Hell!” and again the first two ranks on each of the square’s sides volley-fired against the enemy horsemen, broke their order, and sent them reeling. A smaller attempt at the rear of the square was similarly repulsed while Stockton, expertly directing his cannoneers, sent such a shower of grapeshot after the retreating horsemen that Flores retired his entire force into the low hills surrounding the mesa.

  For such a furious little engagement, the two-and-a-half-hour “Battle of the Mesa” produced few casualties. Among the Americans, there were only five wounded men (Gillespie was one of them, suffering a slight contusion from a spent bullet); Flores had at least one man killed and between twenty and forty wounded.

  On the evening of January 9, Stockton and Kearny took their men across the Los Angeles River and set up camp three miles below the town.

  19

  Cahuenga

  1

  On the morning of January 10, three men approached the Stockton-Kearny camp on the Los Angeles River, the delegation sent as representatives of the town to say that no resistance would be made toward the Americans. Stockton promised that if this were true, there would be no reprisals and the peaceable citizenry would be protected.

  At noon that day, the two officers led their men into the pueblo and dispersed them through all its principal streets and byways, converging on the central plaza to the drumbeat and martial airs of the navy band. Hundreds of Angelinos lined the streets and overlooking hills to watch the pageant, and there were some touchy moments along the route when, as Stockton wrote, his men were “slightly molested by a few drunken fellows who remained about the town.” Several shots had to be fired to scatter the drunks, and two artillery pieces were hauled to the crest of a hill as a warning, but Gillespie was able to raise the flag over his old headquarters, abandoned four months earlier, without incident.

  With sentries posted and horsemen patrolling the fringes of the village to watch for any sign of Flores’ men, Stockton wrote his account of the San Gabriel “campaign” for the War Department. He extended a minimum of credit to Kearny and made no mention of the general’s command of the square that had fended off the charges by the Californian lancers. The commodore said he had been “aided by General Stephen W. Kearny with a detachment of sixty men on foot from the First Regiment of U.S. Dragoons and by Captain A. H. Gillespie with sixty mounted riflemen.” Subsequently, at a court-martial proceeding in Washington, he narrowed the credit even further, making certain that the government realized that he, Stockton, “was wholly and solely responsible for the success of the expedition” and that the campaign had merely been “sustained” by the “gallant and good conduct of General Kearny and all the officers and men under his command.”

  The commodore’s pronouncements to his men for their “brilliant victories” and “steady courage,” his proclamations to the Angelinos assuring them of peace and protection, and his reports to Washington, were the mortar holding together the shaky framework of his command. He needed to make sure there would be no question about who had conquered California and who, now that it had been accomplished, was in control.

  * * *

  At first seemingly oblivious to Stockton’s maneuvering, Kearny went about his business. He was comfortable with the knowledge that as the senior officer in the field, armed with what he fancied as explicit War Department orders, he was the military commander in chief in California and would soon assume control of its governance. More immediately, he needed to bring Frémont in. Just before the San Gabriel fight, Stockton had received a courier’s message saying that the California Battalion had reached San Fernando, a short distance northwest of the pueblo. If Kearny was nettled by the lieutenant colonel’s failure to join his and Stockton’s force earlier, he made no hint of it in the message he dispatched to Frémont on the afternoon of January 10: “We are in possession of this place, with a force of marines and sailors, having marched into it this morning. Join us as soon as you can, or let me know if you want us to march to your assistance; avoid charging the enemy; their force does not exceed 400, perhaps not more than 300. Please acknowledge receipt of this, and dispatch the bearer at once.”

  These were orders from the superior officer. There could be no question of who was in command.

  On January 12, with no response from San Fernando, Kearny wrote another note, and on January 13, two more, asking the battalion’s whereabouts, and sent a note to Stockton expressing the fear that Frémont, if ignorant of the recapture of Los Angeles, might “capitulate and retire to the north.” He offered to take a force out to find the missing battalion but this proved unnecessary when an express rider from Frémont arrived with startling news.

  2

  The fight at the Mesa had ended and the Americans were within a day of recapturing Los Angeles when George Hamley, master of the whaler Stonington, found Frémont a few miles east of San Fernando. He handed over Stockton’s six-day-old message warning of the Californians’ growing belligerence and urging caution in moving the battalion south.

  The explorer had been cautious from the moment he had led his men out of Monterey in mid-December. He did not underestimate the threat posed by Flores’ army after the fall of San Diego. He had the fight at La Natividad in mind and had learned of Kearny’s battle at San Pascual. He had no idea of the Californian strength, armament, or whereabouts. His men were volunteers, untrained, undisciplined, and unpredictable. He was an officer of topographical engineers and had no experience in warfare, but he was no fool and saw his duty as bringing his men and animals safely to the conjoining with Stockton’s army. The commodore’s letter had confirmed the wisdom of his caution: “If there is one single chance for you,” Stockton had written, “you had better not fight the rebels until I get up to aid you, or you can join me on the road to the pueblo [Los Angeles].”

  More messages arrived. On January 11, as the battalion reached the summit of San Fernando Pass, two friendly Californios brought the news to Frémont of the fights at the San Gabriel and the Mesa and of the American reoccupation of Los Angeles. Another courier brought the “join us as soon as you can” note from General Kearny, dated January 10, urging the colonel to “avoid charging the enemy” and asking if he needed assistance in continuing on to the pueblo. A day later, more Kearny notes arrived, ordering Frémont to report to him at his headquarters and asking for an acknowledgment of the order and a time when he would reach Los Angeles. The notes made no mention of Stockton, a fact that might have given Frémont pause.r />
  The explorer put the notes aside; he would answer soon, but for the present he was concentrating on a peace negotiation. José de Jesús Pico, who had been captured at San Luís Obispo, was a key figure in the effort. He had faced a firing squad for breaking his parole, his life had been spared by Frémont, and he now regarded the American officer not only as his savior, but as his friend. H. H. Bancroft said of Pico: “He was a man of some influence, came to men who had no fixed plans, dwelt with enthusiasm on the treatment he had received, and without much difficulty persuaded his countrymen that they had nothing to lose and perhaps much to gain by negotiating with Frémont instead of Stockton.”

  On January 11, Pico completed his talks with General Flores and Manuel Castro at their camps at San Pascual and a rancho nearby called Los Verdugos. By the end of the day, Flores turned over command of the Californians to Andrés Pico and, with his escort, rode toward Sonora. The next morning, as Frémont issued a proclamation at the San Fernando mission calling for a meeting to end all hostilities, Don José brought two of Andrés Pico’s officers to Frémont’s headquarters to “treat for peace.”

  The treaty and armistice were written and signed on January 12 at a deserted rancho on the north end of Cahuenga Pass,1 between San Fernando and the northern outskirts of Pueblo de los Ángeles.

  Antonio María Osio, the Monterey influential who apparently received a detailed description of the meeting at Cahuenga Pass, said of it: “When the two jefes encountered each other … Señor Frémont was recognized for his military expertise, and he correctly esteemed the courage of his opponents. Because he also was a shrewd man, he was convinced that these courageous Mexicans would be of use to the territory after it became a state.… With this in mind, Frémont proposed terms for a surrender to Señor Pico.”

  The document, its seven articles written by Theodore Talbot in both English and Spanish, was signed by Frémont and Andrés Pico. It forgave all past hostilities and allowed all Californian officers and volunteers to return home on parole after surrendering their arms and promising not to resume hostilities. It absolved them of taking an oath of allegiance until after a treaty between the United States and Mexico came into effect and guaranteed them the protection and equal rights of all American citizens. And it permitted any person who wished it the right to leave the territory.

  The terms were exceedingly liberal and Frémont knew they might be questioned. But he did not seem to entertain the critical question: why make a treaty at all? He was being bombarded with increasingly petulant messages from Kearny and Stockton urging him to proceed to Los Angeles; he knew that both men were of superior rank, were a half-day distant, and either one more appropriate, even more “legal,” for treaty-making than he.

  H. H. Bancroft’s answer to this question bore the pervasive cynicism that typified his treatment of the man he called a “filibustero chieftain”: “Frémont’s motive was simply a desire to make himself prominent and to acquire popularity among the Californians, over whom he expected to rule as governor. It was better to adopt conciliatory methods late than never.”

  The generosity of the treaty’s terms was to Frémont entirely defensible. Exacting punishment—perhaps even execution—for the Californian officers and draconian measures for the populace might have resulted in a rising similar to that which had ousted Gillespie’s garrison from San Diego. Such an approach might have created guerrilla bands of angry citizens who would strike and run and prolong the fighting for months. The battles had been fought, Los Angeles was retaken, all the principal towns and ports were in American hands, the Californians had surrendered, their commanding general had escaped to Sonora, their best field commander was now cooperating in the armistice. Frémont expected the governorship of the new territory of California. What was to be gained by alienating the people he would govern?

  In addition, he and his men had missed all the fighting. There was little glory left. Pico had turned over to him the howitzer captured from Kearny’s dragoons at San Pascual and at least he could lead his battalion into Los Angeles with the cannon and with a paper that he later said “put an end to the war and to the feelings of war.” The Cahuenga treaty, he said, “tranquilized the country, and gave safety to every American from the day of its conclusion.”

  In a dispatch to Stockton and Kearny, he wrote of the surrender of Pico and his men, of the recovered San Pascual gun, and of his imminent arrival in Los Angeles. He entrusted the letter and a copy of the treaty to Lieutenant William H. “Owl” Russell of the California Battalion to deliver to the American headquarters.

  3

  Since his arrival in Los Angeles, Stockton had received details on the suppression of a small rising in the north that bore some similarity to what had occurred to Captain Gillespie’s garrison in San Diego. On December 8 past, at the time Stockton was learning of the San Pascual fight, a small band of Californians, reacting to what they considered unnecessarily harsh treatment by the Americans, had seized the acting alcalde of Yerba Buena, a Lieutenant Washington A. Bartlett. The rebels announced that they wished to trade this captive for another officer, Captain Charles Weber, whose behavior was said to be particularly oppressive and insulting. In late December, Marine Captain Ward Marston had set out with a party of marines and sailors for Santa Clara, where the rebels were camped. On January 2, Marston found a force of about 120 Californios under Francisco Sánchez, the former military commander at Yerba Buena. The skirmish that ensued cost the Californios four dead and five wounded, the Americans, two wounded. The next morning, Sánchez agreed to a cease-fire and on January 6, to an unconditional surrender.

  Now, with the news of Pico’s surrender at Cahuenga, the war was certainly over.

  But the treaty pleased neither commander. Who was Frémont to write and sign such a document? Stockton was furious over the liberal terms of the surrender and shared Kearny’s concern that a mere lieutenant colonel of volunteers would assume such a responsibility when his superior officers were within hailing distance.

  Owl Russell was witness to the reactions of the commanders and, although leaving no precise record of it, must have been confused at what he heard, especially after Stockton, when finished ranting over the paper, told Russell he intended naming Frémont governor. The signals became further mixed in Kearny’s headquarters, where Russell, who had known the general in Missouri, spent the night of January 13. Kearny seemed less concerned about the paper than Stockton did. True, the treaty had been written in haste by one not authorized to negotiate a peace, but the terms of it were in accord with what Washington wanted. Kearny agreed with Stockton that Frémont should be given the governorship.

  The commodore, despite strong reservations over the treaty, gave it reluctant approval when he wrote to Navy Secretary Bancroft on January 15, “Not being able to negotiate with me, and having lost the battles of the 8th and 9th, the Californians met Colonel Frémont on the 12th instant on his way here, who, not knowing what had occurred, entered into the capitulation with them, which I now send to you; and although I refused to do it myself, still I have thought it best to approve it.”

  The California Battalion entered Los Angeles in a rainstorm on the afternoon of January 14, 1847. Riding with his beloved, war-painted Delaware bodyguard in front of his four hundred men, pack animals, baggage train, and mule teams pulling six artillery pieces through the muddy streets, Frémont sat his horse straight as a lath. He was tanned and bearded, wore an open-collared, blue-flannel shirt, deerskin hunting jacket, blue-canvas trousers, moccasins, a buccaneer’s bandanna on his head, covered by a slouchy, wide-brimmed hat. The men who followed him looked more like a huge fur brigade riding to a mountain rendezvous than an authorized military force. They were a sunburned, trail-ragged, mud-caked, grizzle-bearded lot—farmers, frontiersmen, hunters, trappers, wanderers, sailors—in their favored buckskins and sun-faded shirts and big floppy hats, carrying huge knives, sidearms, and all manner of carbines, musketoons, and long rifles.

  Owl Russell rode
out five miles from the pueblo and gave his colonel the news of the reactions to the treaty. Russell reported that he thought Kearny more amenable to it than Stockton, and he probably also gave Frémont his impressions of the rivalry between Kearny and Stockton and of the commodore’s claiming credit for the battles of San Gabriel and the Mesa and for having rescued Kearny at San Pascual.

  Frémont thus had a sense of the political problems rising in Los Angeles, but he had no idea of their gravity until he found himself enmeshed in them.

  Since he had no doubt of which officer was the superior in California, he paid a visit first to Stockton. This was the man who had commissioned him in the navy (despite the fact that Frémont had no right to accept the commission since he was already an officer of the army’s Topographical Corps and had not resigned), the man who had rescued Kearny at San Pascual, the man Russell said had offered to turn over to Kearny command of American military forces in California and had been refused.

  The meeting was brief and polite. Stockton was not comfortable with the treaty and was prepared to write an additional article or two before sanctioning it, but he expressed no displeasure with his lieutenant colonel’s actions.

  The meeting with Kearny was similarly cordial. The two had not met since May, 1843, when, at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Colonel Kearny, then in charge of the army’s Third Military Department, had granted Frémont’s request to be issued a brass fieldpiece, powder, and shot to take with him on his expedition to Oregon. That gun had been abandoned, but now the son-in-law of his friend Tom Benton of Missouri was “returning” another, the one lost at San Pascual. The general did not need to be reminded of this. He must also have disliked Frémont’s unmilitary appearance and improper tendency to talk as if he alone had won the peace in California.