The Training Ground (3 page)
In February of that year, the northern half of New Spain had become an independent republic known as Mexico, the name coming from the Aztecs, who referred to themselves as the Mexica. The new Mexican government rescinded Austin’s land grant, but Stephen Austin quickly traveled to Mexico City and successfully lobbied for its return. In December 1821, the first American colonists entered Texas. In exchange for a thirty-dollar payment, each of the three hundred incoming families received 4,428 acres. The Texians, as the American residents called themselves, were required to become Mexican citizens and pay Mexican taxes, forbidden to own slaves, and forced to convert to Roman Catholicism, Mexico’s national religion. Nevertheless, so many Americans took advantage of this generous offer that within a decade the Mexican inhabitants of Texas were outnumbered almost six to one.
M
EANWHILE, EXPANSION WAS
changing the character of the United States.
Before the War of 1812, the United States had considered itself a nonaggressor nation, isolationist by default. There was no need, went the popular logic, to interfere with the sovereignty of other countries; the United States needed only to fill in its natural borders to continue growing. (Of course, this conceit ignored the fact that such expansion meant dispossessing and warring with the many native nations that blanketed the continent.) More pressing issues, such as the ongoing experiment in democracy and the challenge of maintaining independence from Britain, made the notion of instigating a foreign invasion seem ludicrous.
But then America won that second pivotal war with Britain. The following year saw the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, which had ravaged the European continent for more than a decade. Spain came out on the losing end, bringing about the demise of its empire in the Americas, leaving Puerto Rico and Cuba as its lone remaining holdings.
Most of those former Spanish colonies — among them Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Paraguay — reinvented themselves as democratic republics. Not surprisingly, none of this sat well with traditional European powers. France, Austria, Russia, and Britain all made plans to topple the young democracies and claim the new nations as their own in order to gain colonies and resources.
The United States, on the other hand, took pride in the fact that other nations had copied their innovative form of government. Realizing, quite rightly, that the armies of Argentina, Venezuela, and other new democracies were too weak to beat back a large-scale European invasion, the United States shrugged off its isolationist mind-set and thrust itself into the role of protector. In November 1823, then secretary of state John Quincy Adams conceived a doctrine spelling out America’s enhanced role in world affairs. Drawing on America’s ascendance after the War of 1812, and on the lessons learned in 1818 while standing up to Spain during seminal disputes over Florida and over the fate of an American citizen held hostage in a Spanish prison, Adams proposed a foreign policy founded on the twin pillars of defensive strength and nonaggression, buttressed by the threat of war whenever and wherever American interests came under attack in the Western Hemisphere.
Adams shared his proposal with James Monroe and then stood aside as it became known as the Monroe Doctrine, named for the man who announced the new direction in an address to Congress on December 2, 1823. Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, made it clear that American forces would not wage war in Europe. By the same token, European nations were unwelcome within America’s sphere of influence. Such an intrusion, Monroe warned, would be considered “dangerous to our peace and safety.” The United States’ army and navy were pitifully small, a threat to no one, but Monroe promised that appropriate military response would follow.
Europe’s monarchies were furious about the upbraiding from what they still considered an infant nation. They knew that Monroe’s words were not altruistic but a thinly veiled attempt to protect U.S. interests, targeted foremost at Russia, which had designs on the Pacific Northwest. American pioneers were flocking into the territories of Oregon, California, and Texas, none of which belonged to the United States (Oregon belonging to En-gland, and the other two being the property of Mexico). British foreign secretary George Canning (who had previously urged an Anglo-American partnership to keep the Holy Alliance of Russia, Austria, Prussia, and France out of the Americas because they were known to believe that democracy was a threat to absolute monarchy) was particularly offended. He felt that Monroe’s comments were directed at Great Britain.
In 1827, John Quincy Adams — by then America’s sixth president — offered to buy Texas from Mexico for one million dollars. The offer was refused. Adams’s successor, Andrew Jackson, upped the purchase price to five million dollars. He was also refused. With rejection, tensions increased, and as more settlers flocked to the region, whispers of a secessionist rebellion grew to a full-throated roar. On October 1, 1835, a 140-strong Texian contingent attacked a squad of 100 Mexican cavalry on the rain-swollen banks of the Guadalupe River. The Mexicans retreated, and a revolution was born. A provisional Texas government was formed as the Texian army, which grew to 2,000 men, swept across the region, rolling up victories over their unprepared foes.
Come the new year, the Mexican dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna — a ruthless and self-absorbed general with a fondness for public executions — personally led an army of 6,000 men from Mexico City to Texas. On February 23, 1836, he cornered some 200 Texians at a small adobe structure known as Mission San Antonio de Valero — nicknamed the Alamo — and lay siege for thirteen long days. He suffered some 400 casualties, but Santa Anna had men to spare and the Texians did not. On March 2, 1836, Texas boldly declared its formal independence from Mexico. Four days later, the Alamo fell. Santa Anna ordered that those defenders not already dead be massacred. In case there was any doubt about his intentions, he commanded the Mexican band to play the
Degüello,
a dirge synonymous with throat slashing, as his troops moved forward to invest the Alamo.
Santa Anna was far more ruthless three weeks later, when a Mexican force accepted the surrender of 300 Texians at Goliad. Once the Texians — expecting to be taken prisoner — had given up their weapons, Santa Anna ordered them shot.
But it was the Alamo that festered most in the Texians’ craw. Until then, their rallying cry had been “Come and take it.” Soon the far more rousing “Remember the Alamo” took its place. Inspired, the Texians fought back with devastating results. On April 21, Santa Anna was defeated and taken prisoner at the Battle of San Jacinto. On May 14, he signed the Treaty of Velasco, granting Texas’s wish for independence. Texian general Sam Houston ordered that Santa Anna be sent to Washington, D.C., under armed guard to confirm this arrangement with President Jackson. Houston’s plan went awry when the bitterly disappointed people of Mexico deposed Santa Anna before the meeting could took place. As a result, when Santa Anna and Jackson officially met, the general no longer had official power to broker treaties. Britain, France, and the United States all recognized Texas as an independent territory, but the new Mexican government refused to accept this arrangement. With that, another fuse was lit.
Now known simply as Texans, the citizens of Texas lived under constant threat of a punitive invasion. In September 1842, Mexican forces crossed the border at the Rio Grande, took possession of San Antonio, and slaughtered a band of Texans seeking to reliberate the city. Unable to hold the position, Mexico settled for a symbolic victory and retreated back across the river after just a week. They had not reconquered, but the Mexican army was making it clear to Washington that it was capable of crossing the border and inflicting terror at will.
A
S SAM GRANT
was graduating from West Point the following June, U.S. president John Tyler was busy lobbying the Senate to annex Texas into the Union — a gambit that had the tacit approval of the nearly one hundred thousand Texans. The Mexican government vigorously opposed such a move, of course, and talk of war between the United States and Mexico increased.
By the spring of 1844, Grant was posted to the Jefferson Barracks in Saint Louis. Soon, for the first time in his life, he was deeply in love. Julia Boggs Dent was the nineteen-year-old daughter of a plantation owner; her brother had been Grant’s roommate at West Point, and she was also Pete Longstreet’s cousin. Until Julia, Sam Grant’s lifetime list of passions could be summed up in a single word: horses. But something in the outspoken young woman had changed all that. She was not conventionally attractive. Short and athletically built, with dark brown hair and eyes, Julia had a slightly bulbous nose and a cast in one pupil that gave her a walleyed gaze. Yet she was a spirited and sharp-witted young woman and, like Grant, was fond of reading novels and riding horses. He was not the first man drawn to the dynamic force of her personality, willing to overlook her plainness. Julia was a popular guest at the military balls and various galas marking the Saint Louis social season — such a popular guest, in fact, that there were whispers about previous romantic entanglements with the various young men of Jefferson Barracks. Grant was the West Point graduate, trained to be an officer and a gentleman, but it was Julia who was wiser to the ways of the world.
He called her Julia, while she referred to him, somewhat chastely, as “Lieutenant” or “Mr. Grant” in the presence of others, and “Ulysses” when it was just the two of them. “He was always by my side,” she wrote, “walking and riding.” Their behavior was platonic in all respects, in the manner of two good friends who simply enjoyed spending time together, confiding thoughts and observations. He never stole a kiss or publicly held her hand, and she would have been thoroughly shocked if he had.
As the young pair went about their walks and rides, Grant could hardly have known that the Texas controversy and Julia Dent would become the two most powerful and influential forces in his life, shaping his worldview, guiding him through the transition from cadet to warrior, and molding him into the man he would one day be.
It was not clear that war was inevitable, and many soldiers likely had mixed feelings about fighting, but when the Third Infantry received orders in late April 1844 to ship out from the Jefferson Barracks for Fort Jesup, Louisiana, the handwriting was on the wall. Grant’s Fourth Infantry was sure to follow. The reluctant soldier responded by finding a way to delay his departure. He asked for, and received, leave from duty to visit his parents in Ohio. Before embarking, he stopped at the Dent household and spent the day with Julia. He didn’t think of himself as being in love, but given his imminent departure and Julia’s habit of flirting with the socially connected young bachelors of Saint Louis, he wanted to make their relationship more permanent. As they sat alone on the great porch in front of her house, Grant summoned his courage and then proposed — though not in so many words. “He took his class ring from his finger and asked me if I would not wear it,” she remembered.
West Point had been issuing the gold bands to its graduates since 1835. One day the tradition of class rings would be commonplace at colleges everywhere, but it was at the U.S. Military Academy that the practice originated. The band symbolized the years of struggle each cadet had endured, as well as a powerful common bond that could be invoked long after they left the military. Two strangers might be passing each other on a busy city sidewalk but know worlds about each other just by glancing down and spying that gold ring on the other’s finger.
So for Sam Grant to offer that special band to Julia Dent was more than just a casual proposition. It was his way of inducting her into his world, with all the hardships and adventures that came with the army life. And Julia knew what the ring symbolized. Grant had once told her that when the day came that he offered his class ring to a woman, the request would signify their engagement.
She declined.
Grant rose to his feet. Wounded, he asked Julia if she would think of him while he was away. Julia didn’t have an answer. “I, child that I was, never for a moment thought of him as a lover. I was very happy when he was near, but that was all,” she later wrote.
It was only after Grant galloped out the iron front gates of White Haven (as the Dent estate was known) and boarded a steamship for Ohio that Julia realized her true feelings. She was miserable throughout his absence. The emotion was made stronger when the Fourth Infantry finally received orders to ship out for Louisiana on May 7. Lieutenant Robert Hazlitt, a close friend of Grant’s, warned Julia about the possibility that she might never see him again. “If Mr. Grant were not out to see us within a week,” she wrote, summing up the conversation, “we must understand that he had gone on down the Mississippi and would not be at the Barracks again.
“Saturday came and no Lieutenant. I felt very restless and, ordering my horse, rode alone toward the Barracks,” she went on. “I halted my horse and waited and listened, but he did not come.”
At the same time, Grant had come to realize that his powerful attraction to Julia had only intensified. “I now discovered that I was exceedingly anxious to get back to Jefferson Barracks, and I understood the reason without explanation from anyone,” he later recalled.
Hazlitt, who had packed all of Grant’s belongings and carried them ahead to Fort Jesup, sent a kindly letter to Ohio telling Grant not to open any mail postmarked from the Jefferson Barracks until his leave expired. This allowed Grant to feign ignorance about his unit’s shipping out and also gave him one last chance to slip away and make his case with Julia when he returned from leave.
That day came on May 20. Lieutenant Richard “Dick” Ewell, an eccentric friend from West Point, was the duty officer. Ewell was energetic and profane, spoke with a lisp, swore constantly, and had chronic dyspepsia, a habit of tilting his head to one side while speaking, and eyes that bulged from his skull. Ewell was not a shining example of regimental decorum. So when Grant applied for one more week of leave to spend time at White Haven, the unconventional Virginian was just the sort of man who would readily agree — and he did.