A Gallant Little Army
Page 45
43. Furber, Twelve Months, 559; George Turnbull Moore Davis, Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo T. M. Davis, Captain and Aid-de-Camp Scott’s Army of Invasion (New York: Jenkins and McCowan, 1891), 129.
44. Ripley to mother, Apr. 3, 1847, Ripley Papers; Israel Uncapher Mexican War Diary, UTA; Kendall to Picayune, Apr. 4, 1847, Kendall Family Papers, UTA.
45. Sargent, Gathering Laurels, 7; Kendall to Picayune, Apr. 4, 1847, Kendall Papers; Furber, Twelve Months, 558–59; Bill, Rehearsal, 217–18.
Chapter 3. The Army Advances
1. Israel Uncapher Mexican War Diary, UTA; Niles’ National Register, LXXII, Mar. 27, 1847, 59–64; Bevin Alexander, How Great Generals Win (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 24; Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas (1985; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 102–3; Charles Judah and George Winston Smith, Chronicles of the Gringoes: The U.S. Army in the Mexican War, 1846–1848, Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Combatants (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968), 192–93.
2. Samuel Lauderdale to James Lauderdale, Apr. 2, 1847, Lauderdale Family Papers, TSLA; Smith to Joseph Brown, May 27, 1847, Edmund Kirby Smith Papers, BLY; Barna Upton to brother Elias, Apr. 4, 1847, Barna N. Upton Papers, BLY; John Hammond Moore, ed., “Private Johnson Fights the Mexicans, 1847–1848,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 67 (Oct. 1966), 209; Hiram B. Yeager to John C. Yeager, Jun. 10, 1847, Hiram B. Yeager Papers, DRTL; Thomas Williams to father, Apr. 5, 1847, Williams Letters, Justin H. Smith Collection, LAC, UT; Jackson quoted in James I. Robertson Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (New York: Macmillan, 1997), 54–55, 58; William B. Campbell to David Campbell, Apr. 18, 1847, in William Bowen Campbell, Mexican War Letters of Col. William Bowen Campbell of Tennessee, Written to Governor David Campbell of Virginia, 1846–1847, ed. St. George L. Sioussat (reprinted from Tennessee Historical Magazine, Jun. 1915), 166.
3. Robert Anderson, An Artillery Officer in the Mexican War, 1846–7 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911), 97, 100–101; Bankhead to Scott, in Unknown, “Campaigns in Mexico,” BLY; Hitchcock to Lizzie, Mar. 27, 1847, Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, LC.
4. Pillow quoted in Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Roy P. Stonesifer, The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 65; Campbell to Campbell, Mar. 29, 1847, in Campbell, Mexican War Letters, 161.
5. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, 55; Daniel Harvey Hill, A Fighter from Way Back: The Mexican War Diary of Lt. Daniel Harvey Hill, 4th Artillery, USA, ed. Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Timothy D. Johnson (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2002), 93; Robert A. Law, “A Letter from Vera Cruz in 1847,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 18 (Oct. 1914): 218; Bradford to Carry, Apr. 2, 1847, Edmund Bradford Papers, BLY; Upton to brother, Apr. 4, 1847, Upton Papers; see also Smith, Diary, Joseph Rowe Smith Papers, BLY.
6. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 92–93; Lee to Custis Lee, Apr. 11, 1847, Lee Family Papers, VHS; Arthur Howard Noll, General Kirby-Smith (Sewanee, Tenn.: University Press at the University of the South, 1907), 54; Bradford to Carry, Apr. 2, 1847, Bradford Papers; George C. Furber, The Twelve Months Volunteers; or, Journal of a Private, in the Tennessee Regiment of Cavalry, in the Campaign Mexico, 1846–7 (Cincinnati: J. A. & U. P. James, 1848), 561, 569–70.
7. Thomas D. Tennery, The Mexican War Diary of Thomas D. Tennery, ed. D. E. Livingston-Little (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 77; Ripley to mother, Apr. 3, 1847, Roswell Ripley Papers, BLY; Lieutenant Stevens to wife, Apr. 3, 1847, in Hazard Stevens, The Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, 2 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), 1:115; Law, “Letter,” 217; Anderson, Artillery Officer, 112; Kendall to Picayune, Apr. 4, 1847, Kendall Family Papers, UTA.
8. Thomas M. Davies Jr., “Assessments during the Mexican War: An Exercise in Futility,” New Mexico Historical Review 41 (Jul. 1966): 197; K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1974; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 253; John Edwards Weems, To Conquer a Peace: The War between the United States and Mexico (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1974), 357; Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 89, 91; Anderson, Artillery Officer, 81. General Order No. 20 appears in the appendix.
9. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 94; Alfred Hoyt Bill, Rehearsal for Conflict: The War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 218–19; George Turnbull Moore Davis, Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo T. M. Davis, Captain and Aid-de-Camp Scott’s Army of Invasion (New York: Jenkins and McCowan, 1891), 132–36.
10. Timothy D. Johnson, Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 179; Davis, Autobiography, 136–37.
11. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 94; John Smith Reminiscences, Lothrop Family Papers, BLY.
12. Allan Peskin, ed., Volunteers: The Mexican War Journals of Private Richard Coulter and Sergeant Thomas Barclay, Company E, Second Pennsylvania Infantry (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991), 65.
13. Gen. Orders No. 87, Apr. 1, 1847, House Exec. Doc. No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Exec.; Stevens to wife, Apr. 3, 1847, in Stevens, Life, 1:115; Anderson, Artillery Officer, 83.
14. Hill, Fighter from Way Back, 93–94; Judge Zo. S. Cook, “Mexican War Reminiscences,” Alabama Historical Quarterly 19 (fall–winter, 1957): 442–43.
15. Henry O. Whiteside, “Winfield Scott and the Mexican Occupation: Policy and Practice,” Mid-America 52 (1970): 108.
16. Robert E. Lee, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee, His Military and Personal History, ed. A. L. Long (Secaucus, N.J.: Blue and Grey Press, 1983), 66–71.
17. Bill, Rehearsal, 221; Scott to Marcy, Apr. 5, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA; Marcy to Scott, Apr. 30, 1847, United States War Department Letters, BLY.
18. Bauer, Mexican War, 260; Mark Crawford, ed., Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO Publishers, 1999), 9.
19. Jack Allen Meyer, South Carolina in the Mexican War: A History of the Palmetto Regiment of Volunteers, 1846–1917 (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1996), 58–59; Robert E. May, John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader (1984; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 175; Law, “Letter,” 216; Crawford, Encyclopedia, 143.
20. Campbell to Campbell, Feb. 19, Mar. 6, and Mar. 20, 1847, in Campbell, Mexican War Letters, 153, 157, 159; George Rollie Adams, General William S. Harney: Prince of Dragoons (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 97; Kendall to Picayune, Apr. 4, 1847, Kendall Papers; Frederick Cartwright, Disease and History (New York: Dorset Press, 1972), 144–50; Raphael Semmes, Service Afloat and Ashore during the Mexican War (Cincinnati: Wm. H. Moore, 1851), 113–16.
21. Lee to Mary, Apr. 12, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers, VHS; Tom Reilly, “Jane McManus Storms: Letters from the Mexican War, 1846–1848,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 85 (Jul. 1981): 35; A. Brooke Caruso, The Mexican Spy Company: United States Covert Operations in Mexico, 1845–1848 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1991), 147; Scott to Marcy, Apr. 5, 1847, LR SW, RG 107, NA.
22. A printed copy of Scott’s Proclamation is located in the Campbell Family Papers.
23. Smith, Diary, Smith Papers; Upton to brother Elias, Apr. 4, 1847, Upton Papers; William Higgins to uncle, Jan. 4, 1848, William Higgins Papers, BLY; Romeyn B. Ayres, Mexican War Diary, 13, SHC, UNC.
24. Will Lytle to uncle, Dec. 8, 1847, in William Haines Lytle, For Honor, Glory and Union: The Mexican and Civil War Letters of Brig. Gen. William Haines Lytle, ed. Ruth C. Carter (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 46; Chauncey Forward Sargent, Gathering Laurels in Mexico: The Diary of an American Soldier in the Mexican American War, ed. Ann Brown Janes (Lincoln, Mass.: Cottage Press, 1990), 8; H. Judge Moore, Scott’s Campaign from the Rendezvous on the Island of Lobos to the Taking of the City (Charleston: J. B. Nixon, 1849), 72–73.
25. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, “Sketches of the Campaign,” Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, USMA.
26. Davis, Autobiography, 123; John Gardner to Colonel Walbach, May 15, 1847, J
ohn Lane Gardner Letter, BLY.
27. Weems, To Conquer a Peace, 360; Bradford to Carry, Apr. 2, 1847, Bradford Papers.
28. The precise details of this arrangement could not be determined, nor could all of the facts surrounding this episode. Dorich may have actually been the administrator of Mango de Clavo. Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 45–46; Robert E. May, “Henry L. Kinney,” in Barbara A. Tenenbaum, ed., Encyclopedia of Latin-American History and Culture, 5 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996), 3:350; George Wilkins Kendall, Dispatches from the Mexican War, ed. Lawrence Delbert Cress (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 195, 199; statement of Nicholas Dorich, n.d., House Exec. Doc. No. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. L. Kinney to Henry Wilson, Apr. 29, 1847, Henry Wilson Papers, BLY.
Chapter 4. Cerro Gordo: A Brilliant Affair
1. Richard Bruce Winders, Crisis in the Southwest: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle over Texas (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2002), xxviii; Robert L. Scheina, Santa Anna: A Curse upon Mexico (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2002), 87–90; Daniel Harvey Hill, A Fighter from Way Back: The Mexican War Diary of Lt. Daniel Harvey Hill, 4th Artillery, USA, ed. Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Timothy D. Johnson (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2002), 185, n. 41; K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1974; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 260–61; Santa Anna, Apr. 4, 1847, copy in Genaro Garcia Papers, LAC, UT; Albert C. Ramsey, ed. and trans., The Other Side; or, Notes for the History of the War between Mexico and the United States (New York: John Wiley, 1850), 199; Barna Upton to brother Elias, Apr. 4, 1847, Barna N. Upton Papers, BLY.
2. Justin H. Smith, The War with Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 2:46; quotes found in Chauncey Forward Sargent, Gathering Laurels in Mexico: The Diary of an American Soldier in the Mexican American War, ed. Ann Brown Janes (Lincoln, Mass.: Cottage Press, 1990), 8; Hill to parents, Oct. 23, 1847, A. P. Hill Papers, VHS; Fitzgerald to Blackburn, Jul. 10, 1847, Blackburn Family Papers, FHS. Neither Hill nor Fitzgerald were with the army in April; both arrived with reinforcements in summer and fall.
3. Smith, War with Mexico, 2:40–41.
4. Twiggs’s battle report, Apr. 19, 1847, Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.; quote from Jamie S. Linder and William B. Eigelsbach, eds., “To War with Mexico: A Diary of the Mexican-American War,” Journal of East Tennessee History 73 (2001): 82.
5. John Edwards Weems, To Conquer a Peace: The War between the United States and Mexico (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1974), 356; Smith, Diary, Joseph Rowe Smith Papers, BLY.
6. Twiggs’s battle report, Apr. 19, 1847, Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.; Bauer, Mexican War, 263; Alfred Hoyt Bill, Rehearsal for Conflict: The War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 226; Smith, War with Mexico, 2:48; Campbell to Campbell, Apr. 13, 1847, William Bowen Campbell, Mexican War Letters of Col. William Bowen Campbell of Tennessee, Written to Governor David Campbell of Virginia, 1846–1847, ed. St. George L. Sioussat (reprinted from Tennessee Historical Magazine, Jun. 1915), 162.
7. Ramsey, Other Side, 203; Craig L. Symonds, Joseph E. Johnston: A Civil War Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 59; Thomas Claiborne, “Reminiscences of the Mexican War,” 18, Thomas Claiborne Papers, SHC, UNC; R.E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, Apr. 18, 1847, George Bolling Lee papers, VHS.
8. Israel Uncapher Mexican War Diary, UTA; Twiggs’s battle report, Apr. 19, 1847, Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.
9. P. G. T. Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico: The Mexican War Reminiscences of P. G. T. Beauregard, ed. T. Harry Williams (New York: DaCapo Press, 1969), 33–34.
10. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, Apr. 12, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers; Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, 2 vols. (1864; Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 2:432; John Gardner to Colonel Walbach, May 15, 1847, John Lane Gardner Papers, BLY; Scott quoted in Smith, War with Mexico, 2:48.
11. Antonio López Santa Anna, The Eagle: The Autobiography of Santa Anna, ed. Ann Fears Crawford (Austin, Tex.: Pemberton Press, 1967), 96; Ramsey, Other Side, 200; Santa Anna, Apr. 7, 1847, copy from the Cuban National Archives, in Genaro Garcia Papers, LAC, UT.
12. Smith, War with Mexico, 2:43–44; Weems, To Conquer a Peace, 354–55; Ramsey, Other Side, 200; Allan Peskin, ed., Volunteers: The Mexican War Journals of Private Richard Coulter and Sergeant Thomas Barclay, Company E, Second Pennsylvania Infantry (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991), 83.
13. Christopher Phillips, Damned Yankee: The Life of General Nathaniel Lyon (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 51; Paul D. Casdorph, Prince John Magruder: His Life and Campaigns (New York: John Wiley, 1996), 69. Some sources do not mention this tower, and there seems to be some disagreement as to whether it actually existed. It did, and its crumbling remains were still there when I visited the site in 1999. It was with reference to this tower that Lieutenant Edmund Kirby Smith, in his correspondence, referred to El Telégrafo as “castle hill.” See Smith to Brown, May 27, 1847, Edmund Kirby Smith Papers, BLY.
14. Ramsey, Other Side, 201; Smith, War with Mexico, 2:44.
15. Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico, 35–36; T. Harry Williams, P. G. T. Beauregard (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954), 26.
16. John S. D. Eisenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (1989; New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1990), 277; Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Roy P. Stonesifer, The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 67; Thomas Lindsay Diary, UTA.
17. Peskin, Volunteers, 74; Sargent, Gathering Laurels, 8–9.
18. Jonathan Wade H. Tipton Journal, TSLA; Linder and Eigelsbach, “To War with Mexico,” 84–91.
19. Sargent, Gathering Laurels, 9; Thomas D. Tennery, The Mexican War Diary of Thomas D. Tennery, ed. D. E. Livingston-Little (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 80.
20. Ramsey, Other Side, 203–4.
21. George R. Stewart, John Phoenix, Esq., the Veritable Squibob: A Life of Captain George H. Derby, USA (New York: Henry Holt, 1937), 49; Hazard Stevens, The Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, 2 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), 1:123–24.
22. Beauregard, With Beauregard in Mexico, 38; Reminiscence, Palmer Family Papers, VHS; Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (1934; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), 1:239–40.
23. Lee quoted in Smith, War with Mexico, 2:49; Stewart, John Phoenix, Esq., 49; J. Frost, The Mexican War and Its Warriors (New Haven, Conn.: H. Mansfield, 1850), 145.
24. Bevin Alexander, How Great Generals Win (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 107; Edmund Kirby Smith to Brown, May 27, 1847, Smith Papers, BLY.
25. Twiggs’s battle report, Apr. 19, 1847, Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.; Ethan Allen Hitchcock, “Sketches of the Campaign,” Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers, USMA; Smith, War with Mexico, 2:50.
26. Freeman, Lee, 1:242; Smith, War with Mexico, 2:50; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 2 vols. (1903; Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1994), 1:831.
27. Claiborne, “Reminiscences,” 18, Claiborne Papers.
28. Bill, Rehearsal, 226; Smith, War with Mexico, 2:51.
29. Claiborne, “Reminiscences,” 18, Claiborne Papers; Twiggs’s battle report, Apr. 19, 1847, and Harney’s battle report, Apr. 21, 1847, Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 1, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.; Lee to Mary Custis Lee, Apr. 18, 1847, George Bolling Lee Papers.
30. Stewart, John Phoenix, Esq., 50–51; Claiborne, “Reminiscences,” 19, Claiborne Papers.
31. Twiggs quoted in Smith, War with Mexico, 2:52; Claiborne, “Reminiscences,” 20, Claiborne Papers.
32. Claiborne, “Reminiscences,” 8–9, 20, Claiborne Papers; Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univer
sity Press, 1964), 490.
33. Stewart, John Phoenix, Esq., 50–51; Dabney Herdon Maury, Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 36; Heitman, Historical Register, 1:350.
34. Kendall to Picayune, Apr. 25, 1847, Kendall Family Papers, UTA.
35. George Turnbull Moore Davis, Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo T. M. Davis, Captain and Aid-de-Camp Scott’s Army of Invasion (New York: Jenkins and McCowan, 1891), 147–48. Most notably, he commanded one of three contingents of federal troops in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign in 1862 and was out-maneuvered and out-fought by Stonewall Jackson’s smaller but faster command. See Warner, Generals in Blue, 444.
36. Smith, War with Mexico, 2:50, 52; General Orders No. 111, Apr. 17, 1847, printed in Scott, Memoirs, 2:433.
37. Gustavus Woodson Smith, Company “A” Corps of Engineers, USA, 1846–1848, in the Mexican War, ed. Leonne M. Hudson (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001), 30, 32–33.
38. Ramsey, Other Side, 207; Bauer, Mexican War, 265; Smith, Company “A,” 33.
39. Smith, Diary, Joseph Rowe Smith Papers.
Chapter 5. Cerro Gordo: Tomorrow Will Settle the Affair
1. William Campbell to wife, Apr. 17, 1847, Campbell Family Papers, Duke University; E. Kirby Smith, To Mexico with Scott: Letters of Captain E. Kirby Smith to His Wife, ed. Emma Jerome Blackwood (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1917), 132.
2. Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Roy P. Stonesifer, The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 68, 70; Jonathan Wade H. Tipton Journal, TSLA; Campbell to wife, Apr. 18, 1847, Campbell Papers.
3. Hughes and Stonesifer, Pillow, 70; George B. McClellan, The Mexican War Diary of General George B. McClellan, ed. William Stan Myers (New York: DaCapo Press, 1972) 81.
4. Gustavus Woodson Smith, Company “A” Corps of Engineers, USA, 1846–1848, in the Mexican War, ed. Leonne M. Hudson (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001), 33; Justin H. Smith, The War with Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 2:53.