Scott and the Tampico contingent arrived at Lobos on February 21. Several volunteer regiments were already there: the First and Second Pennsylvania, along with the Palmetto Regiment from South Carolina, were on hand. Parts of the Louisiana, New York, and Mississippi regiments had also arrived. The Isle of Lobos, which sat eight miles off the coast of Mexico, was about a mile long and a half mile wide, a beautiful tropical island with lush vegetation that, from a distance, looked like “a green speck or bubble, floating upon the blue.” The earliest soldiers to arrive fought off lizards, sand crabs, and rats to clear space for the army that would soon be gathering there. Scott arrived to find the beach lined with tents and the camp already christened “Camp Winfield.” He also found an outbreak of smallpox among the Pennsylvania troops and ordered them quarantined. While there, he informed Commodore David Conner that he was still waiting for troops and ships to arrive. In addition, he complained that many of his surfboats had not arrived, nor had over half of his supply wagons and two-thirds of his ordnance. Furthermore, the volunteer units suffered from a lack of food. However, bold leadership cannot wait for every detail to fall into place, and Scott knew that other expedients dictated that he forge ahead as quickly as possible—chief among them, the need to capture Veracruz and get away from the coast before the yellow fever season. Units continued to trickle in during the remaining days of February until the numbers reached about 10,000. He never received all of the supplies that he requested, but by March 2, he knew that he could wait no longer. Late that day Scott ordered their departure for Anton Lizardo, an anchorage several miles below the invasion site.17
Seven days later, on the thirty-third anniversary of his promotion to general, Scott watched as the first wave of his invasion army reached Collado Beach. As the boats reached the surf, the soldiers jumped overboard into waist-deep water and, holding their muskets over their heads, rushed up onto the sand. They “took the beach in beautiful style,” with members of the Sixth Infantry first to plant their colors on shore. As they waded onto dry land, they formed under their regimental flags as officers sent skirmishers forward toward the sand hills. Moments later, all of them rushed to occupy the dunes and plant the American flag. From the fleet came a cheer. George W. Kendall, cofounder of and contributor to the pro-war New Orleans Picayune, traveled with Scott’s army, and after watching the landing, thought that “It would take a page of our paper to give full effect to the description of the first landing of our troops . . . a more stirring spectacle has probably never been witnessed in America.” Back on the transport steamers, soldiers who had feared a bloody fight on the beach and were happy not to be among the first to land now felt envy for those who were.18
An interesting lot comprised Scott’s little army. A division of regulars belonging to Scott’s old friend, William Worth, held the honor of landing first. Worth had served on Scott’s staff during the War of 1812 and was a veteran of the Seminole War in Florida. A beaver cap covered his graying hair; he was average size and a good horseman. Soldiers had widely divergent views of Worth’s abilities. A volunteer said that he was “a very great favorite” in the army, and that “his popularity [was due] to his great military talents and his well known regard for the comfort and lives of those under him.” However, several professional officers had a different opinion. Lieutenant Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock thought that an entire volume would be required to list all of the “demerits” exhibited by this “prince of military humbugs.” Lieutenant A. P. Hill called Worth “a weak headed, vain glorious, but brave man, perfectly reckless with the lives of his soldiers.” Surgeon Madison Mills considered Worth “the most unpopular officer in the Army of Invasion.” Lieutenants Daniel Harvey Hill and Ulysses S. Grant thought that the general pushed his men unnecessarily hard and was the nervous type who wore his men out without accomplishing much.19
Also in the first wave was the recently created Company “A” Corps of Engineers—a company made up of enlisted men who, by virtue of special training at West Point, were prepared for a variety of duties, including building roads, bridges, and gun emplacements. Officers of the unit, some of whom would distinguish themselves in the campaign, were all West Point graduates. The company occupied two of the surfboats, and in one of them sat the company commander, Captain Alexander J. Swift, son of Joseph G. Swift, who was the first graduate of the military academy. Company “A” was among the units transferred from Taylor’s to Scott’s army, but by the time it arrived at Anton Lizardo, Swift was critically ill with dysentery and so weak he could hardly stand. The next ranking officer, Lieutenant Gustavus W. Smith, along with Lieutenant George McClellan, tried to persuade Swift to stay on the ship and remain under medical care, but Swift insisted that he accompany his men to the beach. With great difficulty, he had climbed into the surfboat and positioned himself at the stern of the vessel. When they reached the shore, two of his men had to carry him through the surf, but once on the beach, he seemingly recovered some strength and proceeded to issue orders. After a few hours, however, he had spent all of his energy, and his men carried him by litter back to a surfboat, thence out to Scott’s flagship. A few days later he was loaded on the first steamer back to New Orleans, where he died.20
As soon as the boats deposited their men on shore, the sailors rowed them back to the waiting fleet to load the second wave. Over the next few hours, first Major General Robert Patterson’s volunteer division then the other division of regulars under Brigadier General David E. Twiggs boarded the small craft and made the brief voyage to shore. Patterson, although born in Ireland, had moved with his family to Pennsylvania when he was six years old. He served in the War of 1812, then became involved in business pursuits and Democratic politics. A kind gentleman in his mid-fifties, he accepted a commission as major general when the war started. Twiggs, the son of a Revolutionary War general, was two years older than Patterson and an impressive six feet, two inches tall. Nicknamed the “Bengal Tiger,” he had a “head and mustache perfectly white.” Twiggs began the war as a colonel but rose rapidly to become one of the three division commanders in Scott’s army. He seemed to always be concerned lest one of his fellow officers get the best of him. The previous year, while in Taylor’s army, he had become embroiled in a seniority dispute with Worth, and their rivalry would continue throughout the present campaign. Two months earlier, when transferred from Taylor’s command and ordered to take his men to Tampico, Twiggs pushed his men incessantly to the coast, marching them thirty miles one day out of fear that Patterson might overtake him. If that had happened, Patterson’s superior rank would have entitled him to command the whole.21
The landing continued after dark, and by 10 o’clock, three successive waves had deposited approximately 9,000 men on the beach without incident or casualties. The most vulnerable time for an invading army during an amphibious assault is in the initial phase when the first troops land. With insufficient strength to repel a counterattack, they must try to establish a beachhead and wait for their numbers to grow. General Juan Morales, commander of the Veracruz defenses, made a costly error in opting not to oppose the landing. His decision bewildered many of the invaders. “Why the Mexicans did not meet us on the beach when they might have annoyed and cut us up most unmercifully is most unaccountable,” wrote Captain Robert Anderson. Lieutenant D. H. Hill of the Fourth Artillery, which belonged to Twiggs’s division, recorded in his diary his opinion that “the Mexicans have made a fatal mistake in not opposing us on the beach with desperate determination. They will never again have so favorable an opportunity of cutting us to pieces.”22 For his part, Morales obviously decided that he could inflate the strength of his inferior numbers by keeping them inside the city’s defenses in the hope that the Americans would suffer unbearable casualties in dashing themselves against the fortifications. However, it would turn out to be a fruitless gamble, because Scott had no intentions of playing into his opponents’ hands.
In the days ahead, there would be occasional skirmishes with small parti
es of enemy troops, but no orchestrated attempt to repulse the invaders. Scattered elements of Mexican cavalry appeared occasionally. Called lancers, they generally were armed with long lances, escopetas (short-barreled shotguns), sabers, and lassos. Soldiers in Scott’s invading army quickly learned that the lancers “cannot bear up against our heavily armed dragoon,” which was their American counterpart. “Our Dragoon is probably among the best in the world,” thought Moses Barnard. Armed with a pair of pistols, a carbine, and a saber, they also attached to their heavy saddles, bags containing extra horseshoes, a currycomb, and a brush to care for the mount. A canvas bag to water and feed the animal completed the dragoons’ equipment, and their horses were generally large and strong.23 In combat, they moved swiftly and, when possible, closed on an enemy force so as to use their sabers in a slashing fashion. Later, when the army marched inland, they conducted reconnaissance and served as the eyes and ears of the army. Combat and technology would soon go through significant changes that would make mounted troops obsolete, but in the coming campaign, they would play a vital role on numerous battlefields.
On the first night after the landing, the men pushed a short distance inland, then settled among the dunes and along the beach to sleep. Worth ordered the Second Artillery forward toward the city to deploy as skirmishers, half of the men being permitted to sleep at a time. A “cold heavy dew fell,” however, making for a miserable night. They were already wet from wading ashore, and campfires were strictly forbidden. The few who carried a blanket with them were the lucky ones. Staff officers Colonel Joseph G. Totten, Major John L. Smith, and Captain Robert E. Lee landed with their overcoats, which served as their bedroll, but for the most part, the men shivered all night and slept little. Lieutenant McClellan remembered that “we slept in the sand—wet to the middle.” There were false alarms during the night, and at 2:00 A.M., some enemy troops ventured close enough to the beach to engage in a brief and bloodless skirmish. There were no injuries, but it all made for a restless night.24
On Wednesday, Scott’s plan for capturing the city began to take shape. Rather than batter his army against Veracruz’s fortified walls, he would invest the city from the land side and bombard it into submission. His strategy was typical of what he would do in the upcoming campaign: avoid the enemy’s strong points, and seek to use Napoleonic-style turning movements or flank attacks. His decision to besiege the city from the land side represented a turning movement by shifting the tactical front of the battle away from the strength of San Juan de Ulúa, and he further benefitted by isolating the city from the interior of Mexico from whence reinforcements might come. A siege had both positive and negative sides. On the favorable side, it would result in far fewer casualties than a frontal assault, and Scott felt the pressure to preserve his troops and protect his small army. He told one subordinate that if he lost more than a hundred men in taking Veracruz, he would “consider himself a murderer.”25 The unfavorable result of such a plan was simply the amount of time, and Scott knew that the Polk administration wanted haste. Also, the longer the army lingered on the coast, the more susceptible it would be to the approaching yellow fever season. Scott’s decision to pursue the slower option, therefore, was a political and health gamble. So on March 10, instead of massing his troops for an attack, he began to extend his army north so as to occupy a line west of the city that stretched all the way to the coast on its northern side.
The day began with the Spitfire, a small side-wheel gunboat that mounted twelve 24-pounders, moving in close and opening fire on the city and on San Juan de Ulúa. The castle’s guns returned fire in an exchange that lasted about half an hour. One American reported seeing a fire erupt inside the city as a result. Attention in Veracruz was focused on this diversionary duel, which Scott and Conner intended to cover the encirclement of the city. First Worth’s division moved up to within two miles on the city’s south side and nestled itself among the sand hills. Then General Patterson’s division advanced to their assigned position. Brigadier General Gideon J. Pillow’s brigade of Tennesseans and Pennsylvanians led the volunteers as they began to probe further inland.26
Pillow was a lawyer from Tennessee and a close friend of the president’s, but he was not, as historians have often recorded, Polk’s former law partner. He had no formal military training, was, in fact, one of Polk’s political appointees, and as such was widely and correctly believed to be the president’s eyes and ears in Mexico. Pillow had an inflated opinion of himself, which gave West Point officers incentive to ridicule him when he displayed military ineptitude. Some of his own men did not like him for a variety of reasons: either they disagreed with his politics or they simply did not trust him to lead competently. One Tennessee volunteer formed a negative impression of Pillow a few months earlier while still in northern Mexico. On Christmas Day past, while encamped next to a “black lake” from which not even the horses would drink, Pillow’s men ate “hard crackers” or a “dirty piece of fat pork” and washed it down with brackish water. Meanwhile, they watched as their commanding officer seated nearby “regaled himself with some viands that his servant brought to him.” Then he “raised a bottle to his lips,” which the men assumed to contain “good old brandy.” This impression of him did not wane. Colonel William B. Campbell, one of Pillow’s regimental commanders and a future governor of Tennessee, thought Pillow to be “very agreeable” but in no way suited for the military.27 Scott, knowing that he was a Polk man, treated Pillow cordially in an effort to win the president’s favor, but he never fully trusted him.
The air was stagnant and the heat stifling as Pillow pushed his brigade inland. After about a mile, the volunteers approached the small village of Malibran, located among some hills and along the Alvarado Road that ran due south out of Veracruz. Several hundred Mexican lancers and infantry occupying one of the buildings and the surrounding high ground opened a harassing small arms fire on the Americans. Pillow unlimbered one of his batteries, fired several rounds at the building, then ordered Colonel Campbell’s First Tennessee forward to dislodge them. Campbell’s veteran regiment had been in the forefront of the fighting at Monterey the previous September. With a shout, the Tennesseans rushed forward, and after a sharp skirmish that resulted in four American deaths, the Mexicans gave up the high ground and retreated to Veracruz. Upon investigation, Pillow discovered that the building he had just captured was being used as a magazine to store artillery rounds, indicating either a carelessness in not moving the ammunition to the safety of the city or an early intention to oppose the Americans outside the city walls. After the brief clash, Pillow left some troops to occupy the area around the Alvarado Road, then pressed the rest of his brigade forward in a northwesterly direction, gradually extending the investment line.28
Even as units worked to stretch the siege line north, the bulk of the army remained near Collado Beach in a precarious situation. Few had blankets, there were no tents, ammunition was limited, and the only water they had was what they carried in their canteens. Personnel from the ordnance and quartermaster departments were working to rectify the problem. Starting at 4:00 A.M., they began the cumbersome task of bringing cartridge cases, camp equipment, and other supplies ashore, but it would be a slow process that would take days. Meanwhile, that morning, a few additional troops landed, including volunteer regiments from New York and Alabama, as well as the Palmetto Regiment from South Carolina. Horses, however, remained on board the steamers and would have to get to shore by swimming. Troops that had been aboard ships for days were quickly exhausted walking in the deep sand, and with the unbearable heat, many began to discard what little equipment they had. All the while, Mexican artillery lobbed an occasional round toward the American position, although with little effect.29
General Scott also went ashore on March 10 and began to confer with his staff officers, or, as some referred to them, his “little cabinet.” Scott relied heavily on these men—Totten, Lee, Lieutenant Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock, and other West Point–trained engi
neers like Lieutenants George McClellan and P. G. T. Beauregard—for reconnaissance, information, and recommendations throughout the campaign. In addition to Veracruz’s hard defenses, the Mexicans had planted “thick clusters of prickly pear” around the outer walls. The ground closest to the city wall was relatively flat so that an attacking army would have to traverse 400 yards of open terrain, some of which was booby-trapped with concealed holes with sharpened stakes inside that pointed skyward. The Mexican defenders did not have the kind of defensive firepower that the rifled musket would afford to Civil War armies, but they held a superior position inside their fortified walls with a good field of fire. Their advantage did not go unnoticed among U.S. soldiers, many of whom recognized that a direct assault would carry with it heavy losses.30 An American attack would give the Mexicans their best chance to inflict damage on the army, perhaps 2,000 casualties by Scott’s estimation, but Old Fuss and Feathers was determined not to give his opponent that opportunity.
With these thoughts in mind, Scott met with his trusted staff and had a discussion that “could hardly have been more solemn.” He explained to them that although a night attack would be successful, it would be “at the cost of an immense slaughter on both sides.” Scott preferred the “slow, scientific process” of a siege even though he knew the president wanted rapid results, and although he felt “Mr. Polk’s halter around my neck,” he could not bring himself to order a headlong assault on the city. His staff concurred, and in the days immediately following the landing, they set out to identify the most favorable location for his artillery in preparation for bombarding the city. Scott hoped for a short siege and a quick march inland to a healthier climate; he would resort to a bloody assault only as a last option. He knew his use of time would be scrutinized by the impatient administration. A December 22 letter from Marcy suggesting that Scott take with him to Mexico volunteers who had been in the service longest indicated that the secretary probably did not expect the war to last into the summer, when the volunteers’ one-year enlistments would expire.31
A Gallant Little Army Page 4
