The Training Ground (37 page)

The discussion of Jomini and tactics is elaborated quite well in Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson’s
Attack and Die.
My knowledge of artillery and armament was greatly enhanced by Naisawald’s
Grape and Canister
and Manucy’s
Artillery through the Ages.
For further information on the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, the official reports filed by Taylor make for a fine overview.

Artillery specialist
“Prince” John Magruder
fought for the South during the Civil War but fell out of favor with Robert E. Lee and was reassigned to Texas. He was victorious at the Battle of Galveston in January 1863 but spent the rest of the war away from the larger action. Afterward he served as a mercenary in the Mexican army, but when Emperor Maximilian was toppled, Magruder fled back to Texas, where he lived out his days. He died in 1871, at the age of sixty-three.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Meade’s comments can all be found in his letters and memoirs. Freeman Cleaves’s excellent
Meade of Gettysburg
offers great history and insights into this man. All quotes attributed to and referring to Meade in this section come from those two sources. Adrian George Traas’s
From the Golden Gate to Mexico City,
published by the U.S. Army’s Center of Military History, not only tells the story of the Topographical Corps during the Mexican War but also describes the job requirements of a topo in great detail.

CHAPTER NINE

The differing battlefield accounts of Longstreet, Grant, and Meade make for a nice study of each individual. Grant shows himself to be pensive and prone to study before acting; Meade is heroic, though uncharacteristically vainglorious; and Longstreet is humble and reflective. General Díaz de la Vega’s comment is taken from K. Jack Bauer’s
The Mexican War
and was originally overheard by Captain McCall.

CHAPTER TEN

Of all the characters in this story, none was quite so enigmatic and difficult to understand as Jefferson Davis. He is undoubtedly one of the most accomplished Americans of his, or any, time. I leaned heavily on various biographies of him, as his own letters and personal papers were not often revealing. The quote from the
North American
was taken from Johannsen, and notes on the nation’s mood were influenced both by Johannsen and by Justin W. Smith’s compelling
The War with Mexico.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Grant’s comments about his beard can be found in his letters, as can Dana’s reference to Brown’s death. Grant wrote of Taylor’s “no pillaging” policy in his memoirs, which were also the source of his comments on the volunteers. Meade was extremely outraged about the influx of volunteer regiments, particularly when his worst fears about their character and bravery were proved all too true in Matamoros. It is interesting, by the way, to read the different descriptions of that riverfront city by the wide variety of soldiers who served there and wrote down their impressions. Some soldiers were pleasantly surprised at the city’s quaint character, while others found it filthy and oppressive.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The “bake one’s brains” comments came from Dana, with his typical tendency toward the dramatic, as did the descriptions of fandangos.
Monterrey Is Ours!
a collection of Dana’s letters, shows a man conflicted by his love and concern for his wife, and the more carnal desires arising from such a lengthy separation. His words describe that timeless conflict fighting men struggle with to this day, and he is alternately lusty, flirtatious, jealous, and quietly accusing in letters to his wife, Sue. The fandango descriptions were just the tip of the iceberg.

The insights into the Quartermaster Department can be found in Dr. Alvin P. Stauffer’s article in the May–June 1950 edition of the
Quartermaster Review.
He displays a deep zeal for logistics in the piece, and it is a treat to read.

Walt Whitman’s comments and the description of religion and the American psyche lean heavily on Johannsen.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Mexican-American War and the Media (
http://www.history.vt.edu/MxAmWar
) Web site, compiled by the University of Vermont, was an astounding source of newspaper knowledge, with complete articles from newspapers around the nation and around the world detailing the war as it unfolded. Such a resource saved countless hours in newspaper libraries, staring at microfilm in the hope of finding that one sentence or paragraph to fit a particular passage. Most newspaper articles mentioned in this book can be found there, including this chapter’s quote from the
Times.

As always, the simple overview came courtesy of Bauer’s
The Mexican War.
Davis’s quotes came from William J. Cooper’s and Felicity Allen’s works on Davis.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sherman’s trip aboard the
Lexington
was quite well documented in his memoirs. All quotes are taken from there. It’s interesting to note that Charles Darwin visited Puerto Soledad, the site of the
Lexington
’s participation in the 1831 Falklands crisis, aboard the HMS
Beagle
in 1833. He made a point to note that the small port and former penal colony was populated by “runaway rebels and murderers.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The story of the Mississippi Rifles is told in splendid detail in Joseph Chance’s
Jefferson Davis’s Mexican War Regiment.
Anyone seeking to know more about that regiment would do well to give it a read. Both that book and the various Davis biographies offer a compelling discussion of the superior ballistic capabilities of the rifle over the standard-issue musket.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

There is no lack of research on Abraham Lincoln, but I relied mostly on Carl Sandburg’s
Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
as the definitive source on his life and political ambitions.
Illinois in the Mexican War,
by Samuel Bigger McCartney, offered details about the men from that state and the economic reasons they were eager to volunteer for duty. Among those men was Lincoln’s friend
Edward Dickenson Baker,
who went on to live a long and prolific life. During the Mexican War, he served as a colonel with the Fourth Regiment of the Illinois Volunteers, seeing action at Veracruz and Cerro Gordo. After the war, he served another term in Congress as a representative from Illinois and then moved to San Francisco to practice law. In 1860 he moved to Oregon, where he was promptly elected to the U.S. Senate. When the Civil War broke out, he was authorized to form a volunteer infantry regiment and was killed in action during the Battle of Ball’s Bluff on October 26, 1861. The Senate mourned him for thirty days, wearing black crepe armbands in Baker’s memory. A city and a county in Oregon are named in his honor, as are several military forts. A life-size marble statue of Baker stands in the Capitol.

Edward Baker Lincoln, his namesake, died of tuberculosis in Springfield, Illinois, in 1850. The boy was just three years old.

Another political acquaintance of Lincoln’s who went off to fight was
General James Shields.
He was seriously wounded at Cerro Gordo, recovered, and then was wounded again in the fighting around Mexico City. Shields returned to civilian life after the war. He represented Illinois in the U.S. Senate from 1849 to 1855 and Minnesota in the same capacity from 1858 to 1859. He resumed his military service during the Civil War and was notably defeated by Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson during the Valley Campaign of May and June 1862. He died on June 1, 1879, in Ottumwa, Iowa.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The tortuous journey upriver to Camargo was something Grant and Dana wrote home about in great detail. Their comments are taken from those letters, as are Dana’s descriptions of Camargo. A fascinating reference source was
The March to Monterrey: The Diary of Lieutenant Rankin Dilworth,
though for an unusual reason. Although his journal was insightful, the book’s editors saw fit to add great amounts of historical minutiae to round out Dilworth’s words. Among those facts were the specifics on the
Aid.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The man responsible for making sure Grant remained a quartermaster was Taylor’s chief of staff,
Major William W. S. “Perfect” Bliss.
This young officer was an extraordinary individual. He graduated from West Point in 1833 at the age of seventeen, finishing ninth in a class of forty-three. It was there that he earned his nickname, thanks to his classmates’ belief that he was a genius. Indeed, Bliss could read thirteen languages and speak six fluently. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy, military tactics, and even poetry. After a year fighting the Cherokees as an infantry officer, Bliss returned to the academy and taught math for seven years. He fought against the Seminoles in 1840–41 and then began a decade of service to Zachary Taylor. Bliss served as Taylor’s chief of staff until the end of the Mexican War, married the general’s daughter in 1848, and served as personal secretary to Taylor during his presidency. He returned to military life in 1850 and died three years later in Pascagoula, Mississippi, from yellow fever. Both the Fort Bliss Military Reservation and the Fort Bliss National Cemetery bear his name.

Second Lieutenant Alexander Hays,
the son of a congressman, graduated from West Point a year behind Sam Grant, finishing twentieth in a class of twenty-five. The two became close friends during the Mexican War. Hays resigned his commission in 1848 and headed out for the gold fields of California. Failing utterly as a miner, he returned home to Pittsburgh and worked as an engineer.

During the Civil War he enlisted as a private, but he distinguished himself on the field of battle, was promoted steadily, and soon became an officer again. Hays was injured at the Seven Days’ Battles near Richmond, Virginia, in June 1862 and then had his leg shattered by a bullet during the Second Battle of Bull Run. Shortly after his convalescence from that wound ended, he was promoted to brigadier general. Hays’s most famous moment came while commanding the Third Division of the Second Corps during the Battle of Gettysburg. Hays played a pivotal part in repelling Pickett’s Charge, riding up and down the lines on horseback and ordering his troops to “stand fast and fight like men.” He had two horses shot out from under him that day, but his actions broke Pickett’s attack and preserved the Union victory. When the battle was won, Hays promptly kissed his aide and then rode up and down his lines dragging a captured Confederate flag in the dirt. Hays was later killed at the Battle of the Wilderness in April 1864, shot through the head by a rebel bullet.

Hays’s quotes in this text come from Smith’s
Grant.

Texas Ranger
Samuel Walker
was lanced in the back by Mexican guerrillas while escorting a supply convoy from Veracruz to Mexico City in October 1847. He was originally buried in Mexico, but in 1856 his remains were exhumed and moved to the Odd Fellows Cemetery in San Antonio.

Abner Doubleday
’s comments are taken from the footnotes to Dilworth’s journal. Doubleday, who was a major at the start of the Civil War, was present at Fort Sumter when the first shots were fired, and over the course of the war he was promoted all the way up to colonel, with a secondary rank as a major general of volunteers. He led men at the battles of Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg. He was relieved of his command on the second day at Gettysburg, however, when Major General George Meade questioned his combat effectiveness. Returning to the field in a lesser capacity, Doubleday was soon wounded in the neck. He served in Washington for the remainder of the war. He died on January 26, 1893, at the age of seventy-three. Despite prevailing myths to the contrary, he did not invent baseball.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Taylor’s comments can be found in
The Mexican War and Its Heroes.
Dana was the officer who made reference to Monterrey’s being a veritable Gibraltar. The comments about military life for regular soldiers come from Ballentine.

Brigadier General William Worth
became a major national hero after the Mexican War. He was a boastful man, and proud of saying that he was the first man to go ashore during the invasion of Veracruz and the last man to leave Mexico City at the end of the American occupation. He died of cholera shortly after returning, however, at the age of fifty-five. Worth’s remains were buried in Worth Square in New York City. A massive obelisk at the juncture of Broadway and Fifth Avenue marks the site. Fort Worth, Texas, bears his name.

CHAPTER TWENTY

As one of the Mexican War’s seminal and most viciously fought battles, Monterrey was a favorite memoir topic. Even though Meade, Grant, and Dana all wrote capably about the action, my favorite is John R. Kenly’s
Memoirs of a Maryland Volunteer.
His descriptions of the battlefield have a powerful narrative quality that transports the reader into the action. Also worth noting is Samuel Chamberlain’s
My Confession:
Recollections of a Rogue.

Major Joseph Mansfield,
designer of Fort Brown, ended the Mexican War as a colonel. He remained in the army for the rest of his life and was promoted to brigadier general at the start of the Civil War. Mansfield, whose beard and hair were snowy white by then, was known for being vigorous and more than a little fussy. He was, however, a very capable leader and in September 1862 assumed command of the Army of the Potomac’s XII Corps. Shortly thereafter, he was shot in the stomach at the Battle of Antietam and died of his wounds — one of six generals killed in that engagement. A monument marks the spot where he fell.

The comments of Meade and Grant are taken from their letters and memoirs. Worth’s comments come from
The Mexican War and Its Heroes.
The description of Twiggs is from Maury. Davis’s quotes come from Chance’s
Jefferson Davis’s Mexican War Regiment
and Cooper’s
Jefferson Davis, American
. Kenly’s
Maryland Volunteer,
Reid’s
Scouting Expeditions of the Texas Rangers,
and Chamberlain’s
Recollections
paint a vivid picture of the hellish fighting inside Monterrey. Meade attempts to tell the same story in his letters and does so well enough, but as he was on the other side of the city, all of his observations are secondhand. Nevertheless, I chose to include his comment about “ten of our gallant officers” being slaughtered.