America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan (8 page)

With 1600 men Kearny departed Fort Leavenworth in June 1846. He had with him also 460 horses, 3,700 mules, 15,000 cattle and oxen, and 16 pieces of artillery. His force was hailed the “Army of the West,” and as it trekked through the desert, threats arose from hostile Indians, Mexican patrols, rattlesnakes, and dehydration. But, in mid-August, the colonel and most of his troops arrived in Santa Fe.

Kearny lost no time in establishing an American presence. He claimed the lands for the United States, promised U.S. citizenship to the inhabitants, drafted a constitution for the territory, proclaimed religious freedom, appointed civilian officials, and, along with his soldiers, tasted new foods that were then and now staples of the Southwest. Kearny’s energy seemed inexhaustible. Upon determining that all was in order, he moved on. With a much reduced force Kearny entered what is now the state of California on November 25. He had accomplished much, and Polk, in August, had rewarded him with promotion to brigadier general.

Unfortunately, back in New Mexico, the situation deteriorated. The soldiers left behind were behaving badly. Civilians still loyal to Mexico were plotting revenge. And, with a breakdown of law and order, common criminals felt unrestrained. The result was an outbreak of violence, at times brutal. Eventually, American troops pacified the territory, but not before well over two hundred people were dead.

When Kearny reached California, the towns and countryside were far from peaceful. Acting on orders from Polk transmitted via Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, the American navy had occupied towns along the coast. But in addition to sailors and marines, U.S. Army soldiers had been deployed to California. Some of these were under the command of Lieutenant John C. Fremont, one of those figures in American history who appear larger than life.

Among the inhabitants of California, loyalties were mixed. Some folks wanted the territory to remain part of Mexico. Others favored a semiautonomous region within the southern republic. A few thought California should be an independent nation. Some just wanted to be left alone. A large number thought the future lay with the United States. After a fair amount of bloodshed, political intrigue, and squabbles between Kearny, Fremont, and the senior naval commander, Robert F. Stockton, that brought credit to none of them, the issue was decided. California would join the Union, which it did in 1850, becoming the thirty-first state.

As Kearny was moving into California, one of his officers who had remained in Santa Fe took his troops far to the south, eventually linking up with Zachary Taylor in Monterrey. The officer was Colonel Alexander Doniphan. He commanded about a thousand mounted Missouri volunteers. Besides the extreme hardship of the journey itself, Doniphan encountered elements of the Mexican Army, defeating them twice. When the Americans returned home to the United States, their epic march was over. Doniphan and his men were greeted as heroes.

Doniphan had reached Taylor’s camp early in May 1847. Two months earlier Winfield Scott had landed his army on the coast of Mexico, just south of Vera Cruz.

Well fortified and garrisoned by more than four thousand soldiers, Vera Cruz was the gateway to Mexico City, Scott’s ultimate objective. His troops came ashore on March 9, 1847. The landing was the first amphibious operation conducted by the United States military. By selecting beaches to the south of the city, Scott’s army of twelve thousand men met no opposition during the vulnerable transition from sea to land. The success of the endeavor spoke well of the planning Scott and his staff had conducted and of the skill of the American navy.

Purposefully, Scott eschewed a formal assault upon Vera Cruz. Instead, he brought heavy guns ashore and laid siege, opening fire on March 23. His artillery pounded the city continuously for seven days. Blockaded seaward by ships of the United States Navy and on land by soldiers of the U.S. Army, the Mexican troops in Vera Cruz had no hope of success. They soon surrendered, on March 29. Only 19 Americans had been killed. Their opponents lost approximately 180, many of them civilians.

Scott lost no time in departing Vera Cruz, heading west to the Mexican capital. He was anxious to avoid the onset of yellow fever, which on the hot and humid coastal plain was always present and often deadly. A small number of troops were left in the city. Throughout the remainder of the war, Vera Cruz would remain the port of entry for American reinforcements and supplies.

To reach Mexico City, Scott chose to march along the route taken by Cortés in 1519. This would take his army through the town of Cerro Gordo. There, Santa Anna, now president of the republic, as well as commander in chief of the army, had deployed some twelve thousand men in a strong defensive position. To his right were steep cliffs overlooking a river. To his left were high hills. The road to the capital ran through the hills. Conditions favored the Mexicans. Scott had but eighty-five hundred men and would be attacking troops well positioned and well armed.

The American commander organized a multipronged assault, one thrust of which was to strike at Santa Anna’s rear. This strike was made possible by daring reconnaissance conducted by an army engineering officer who somehow found a path around the Mexican left flank. The officer’s name was Robert E. Lee. The attack took place on April 18, 1847, and well before noon, the battle was over. Scott’s forces crushed those of Santa Anna. Sixty-three Americans were killed and 337 wounded. The number of Mexican casualties is uncertain, although it was no doubt large. More than 1,000 Mexican soldiers were captured, among them 5 generals. Santa Anna himself escaped, but the wagon carrying coin for his soldiers did not.

At Cerro Cordo Winfield Scott had won a great victory. But his objective was to occupy Mexico City, so he continued west, reaching the city of Puebla on May 28. With a population of seventy-five thousand, the town was among the most important in Mexico. At Puebla the Americans were two-thirds of the way to the capital. Their army numbered about six thousand, although many of these soldiers were in the hospital, unfit for combat. With volunteer brigades leaving for home, with the requirement to garrison towns along the way, and with the constant presence of men too sick to fight, the size of Scott’s army fluctuated even as reinforcements arrived from Vera Cruz two hundred miles away. Among the reinforcements to reach Puebla were twenty-four hundred regulars commanded by a brigadier general, Franklin Pierce. He and his troops joined up with Scott on August 6.

The next day the Americans broke camp. To hold Puebla, Scott left behind four hundred soldiers. With them were medical personnel attending eighteen hundred men. According to U.S. Army records the troops Winfield Scott took out of the city numbered 10,738. Their goal was to march about a hundred miles through enemy territory, attack a fortified city with a population of two hundred thousand people, and defeat in battle an army three times their size. In Great Britain the duke of Wellington, no stranger to military campaigning, is said to have deemed Scott’s position hopeless.

Accompanying Scott and his army was an American diplomat. With the capture of Vera Cruz Polk and Secretary of State James Buchanan thought the Mexican government might be amenable to discussing an end to the conflict. So they appointed Nicholas P. Trist to find out. Trist was the chief clerk of the Department of State, a lowly sounding title perhaps, but in reality the second-ranking official in the American Foreign Ministry. His résumé was impressive: Trist had studied law under Thomas Jefferson, had served as Andrew Jackson’s private secretary, and had been U.S. consul in Havana.

The capital of the Republic of Mexico was situated just west of three large lakes. To the north was Lake Texcoco, largest of the three. To the south lay Lake Chalco. Between them were extensive marshlands. The third lake was to the northwest of Lake Chalco and called Lake Xochimilco. To the west of this lake was El Pedregal, a stony hard lava field difficult to transit. The simplest way into the city was over causeways that crossed the marshes. However, easy to defend, these would be difficult if not disastrous for any attacking force to utilize.

On the advice of his engineers, among them not just Lee but a George B. McClellan, Scott chose to attack from the south, skirting around Lake Chalco and moving northwest, with Lake Xochimilco on his right. On August 17, his troops occupied the town of San Augustin, just nine miles from Mexico City.

Not unreasonably, Santa Anna had expected Scott to approach from the north. When he learned of the Americans’ movements, he redeployed his forces, moving General Gabriel Valencia’s army to meet the threat from the south. With four thousand troops Valencia moved into a position between two villages, Padierna and Contreras. He expected El Pedregal to complicate the expected American attack. It did, but it did not prevent it. Elements of Scott’s army crossed the lava field and defeated Valencia’s force. Santa Anna was not pleased. He ordered that Valencia, who had disobeyed an order to withdraw, be shot. Yet Santa Anna could have done better himself. At one time during the battle the Americans were vulnerable to a strike by the Mexican commander in chief’s men, who were positioned just north of Valencia’s. But Santa Anna stayed put. He thus missed an opportunity to inflict a decisive blow against Winfield Scott.

The battle was fought on August 20 and was over by noon. It was a stunning victory for the Americans. They killed some seven hundred of the enemy and captured more than eight hundred. Additionally, they took possession of substantial numbers of guns, mules, and other military supplies. As one scholar of the war, Robert Selph Henry, put it, Valencia’s army “had ceased to exist as a military unit.”

But Padierna, or Contreras as it is sometimes called, was only the first of two battles fought that day. The second would be far bloodier.

North of Pedregal was a small river, the Churubusco. The Mexicans had established a strongpoint at one of its bridges and at the Convent of San Mateo nearby. At both locations, Mexican artillery was in place, manned by Irishmen who had deserted from the American army. Known as the San Patricios, these men would fight hard, aware of the consequences should they be captured.

That afternoon the Americans attacked. In three separate actions, Scott’s army frontally assaulted the bridge and the convent. The army also struck at Mexican forces north of the river, crossing another bridge to the west that was undefended. Winfield Scott committed everything he had to this fight. At first the attacks were repulsed. Yet the Americans kept coming, with the bayonet often the weapon of choice. In time, despite fighting hard, the Mexicans gave way. Scott’s army had triumphed again.

But the cost to the Americans was high. The battles of August 20, 1847, had resulted in 1,016 casualties, most of them at Churubusco. The dead numbered 138.

For the Mexicans the day—it was a Friday—was a disaster. Santa Anna’s army had been crushed. Four thousand Mexican soldiers were killed or wounded. Three thousand were taken prisoner. Santa Anna and the remnants of his force withdrew to the outskirts of the capital city itself. There they waited, expecting the American commander to regroup and attack again.

Instead, Scott proposed a truce.

He reasoned that it might encourage the Mexican government to discuss how to end the war, a view concurred with by Nicholas Trist. Moreover, further bloodshed would be avoided and the needs of the army better served. Scott’s healthy soldiers needed to rest. His wounded needed attention. Both were in need of supplies, particularly food. So the general offered a cease fire, knowing that, if need be, his army could easily engage the enemy once again.

The Mexicans accepted Scott’s offer. On August 20, the two sides signed an armistice. The agreement called for a cessation of hostilities and an exchange of prisoners. It forbade military reinforcements and permitted the Americans to secure supplies from within Mexico City.

Scott hoped that with the guns silent, Trist would be able to negotiate a peace treaty. But the diplomat was unable to do so. The Mexicans were not yet ready and the American terms were too stiff. Meanwhile, Santa Anna, a genius of sorts but not an individual to be trusted, had begun rebuilding his army (a task for which he showed extraordinary aptitude) and enhancing Mexican defenses, two activities expressively forbidden by the agreement. Whether the Mexican general ordered that supplies to the Americans be limited is unclear, but they were not as easily obtained as Scott had hoped. On September 6, 1847, the American commander notified his counterpart that the truce was no longer in force.

Two days later American artillery opened fire, in support of infantry that was marching into battle. Their targets were two stone buildings situated outside the capital city. These were known as Molina del Rey and Casa Mata. The former was a foundry Scott believed to be manufacturing cannons. The American force was no small detachment. In total it numbered 3,250 men. One of them, Captain Kirby Smith, wrote his wife the night before that “tomorrow will be a day of slaughter.”

It was. The Mexican defenders were well deployed and, as they so often did, fought tenaciously. As the Americans surged forward, General Peña y Barragán organized two counterattacks. These failed, and after hard fighting, Scott’s forces, led by Brigadier General William Worth (who, after the war, would give his name to a fort in Texas near the future city of Dallas), carried the day. Worth’s men suffered terribly: 653 were wounded, 117 were killed, in total nearly one-fourth of the attacking force. Those who survived, and Kirby Smith was not one of them, were ordered to return to their base. General Scott had envisioned the attack as a raid, not as an assault to win and hold ground. Later, both American commanders learned that no capability to construct cannons existed at the Molina.

The next target for American artillery was the fortified, rocky ridge called Chapultepec. Two hundred feet high, it dominated the landscape. At its top were several buildings that once had served as the summer palace of the Spanish viceroys. In 1847 they constituted the Mexican military college where young cadets learned the art and science of warfare. Chapultepec was significant, not as a military objective, but as the very symbol of the Mexican Republic. To capture it would signal an American victory. To lose it to the invaders would mean Mexican defeat and dishonor.