Soldiers of Conquest (46 page)

Grant rode along with the other officers accompanying Scott. After an hour they arrived at El Pinon and Scott called out to his escort of Dragoons and halted them. He climbed down from the wagon and moved among the officers, all of whom had dismounted and removed their hats to show affection. He called the men by name, said a few words to each one, and shook his hand. Grant found himself standing near Lee as Scott came up and caught the man by the hand.

“Colonel Lee, when you return to Washington be sure to come and visit me.” Scott clasped him by the shoulder with a friendly grip.

“It has been an honor to serve under you, general,” Lee said in a tone that told much about the depth of their friendship

“Good man,” Scott said.

Scott turned to Grant and pumped his hand. “You are Captain Grant. The colonel has spoken of you.”

“Yes, sir.” Grant was pleased Lee had mentioned his name to the general.

Scott completed his circle through the men and again mounted his wagon. He gave a smart salute to the bareheaded group and seated himself. The caravan began its long journey up into the high Sierra Madre and then down the far eastern slope of the mountains to the seacoast.

*

May 30, 1848. The great central chamber of the National Palace was packed with Mexican governmental and church officials, officers of the foreign legations, and high ranking American and Mexican army officers. Sunlight streamed in through the windows surrounding the high dome of the room and lighted the interior with a fine golden light. All eyes were on President Luis de la Pena and General Butler standing together in the center of the room. Each man held a leather bound document containing the terms of the peace treaty agreed to by the two nations.

Butler, standing erect and very military, offered his copy of the treaty to Pena. The Mexican President accepted the document with a slight nod of his gray streaked head, extended his copy to the American and the exchange was made. General Butler turned to the gathering of dignitaries; he spoke for exactly three minutes wishing peace between the two nations and prosperity for Mexico. Pena spoke for only one minute. He turned to Butler and put his hand. The two men shook hands and the ceremony ended.

The people moved in mass toward the wide doors standing open. Lee went with the flow and looking about over the heads of most everybody around him. He saw Elizabeth off on his right a short ways and his heart sped its beat. Days earlier she had sent him a short letter stating she had found pleasure in his friendship, but knew that nothing could come of it. That she had accepted a proposal of marriage from Minister Doyle's chief assistant. Even so, Lee wanted to speak to her one last time and waded across the current of people to her.

“Hello, Elizabeth,” he said and catching her by the arm.

She turned, and seeing who had hold of her, gave him a pleased smile and took his hand in both of hers. “I had hoped we would see each other before you left the city.”

“So had I.” Her warm, smooth hand brought back memories of the other times he had touched her. Everyone of them was a time to remember for she was a most appealing woman. His hand tightened on hers.

“When do you leave?”

“In an hour or so. My engineers and I are the very first to go.”

“You must be happy to go home after so many months away.”

“A lovely woman made my time here very pleasant. I wish to thank her now.”

“And I too enjoyed our friendship. I shall miss you, Robert.”

“And I you.”

“Perhaps if we had met at some other time this all might have turned out differently,” Elizabeth said in a low voice.

Then she smiled brightly. “Goodbye, Robert. Have a safe journey.” She spun quickly away and merged into the moving crowd, some of which had turned to glance at the two making an island in the current of people.

Lee went at a slower pace and watched Elizabeth draw away. She never looked back. This chapter of life was closed for both of them.

*

The long caravan of cannons and wagons rumbled and rattled on the National Highway toward the seacoast and the docks at Veracruz. Every heavy siege cannon was tripled-teamed and every loaded wagon double-teamed by either mules or horses. The teamsters cursed their animals and laid the whips on their backs to drive them up the steep mountain grades. The thousands of marching infantrymen grumbled and sweated.

General Butler and General Patterson and Lee led the caravan. Butler and his staff had joined with Patterson's division for the journey to the coast. Lee liked the two men and was pleased the three of them were traveling together. Lee's company of engineers came next for their duty was to repair any bridge or section of road that had been washed out by the spring rains. Next came the heavy siege cannons and field artillery, then the infantry, the wagons carrying the sick and wounded from the hospital in Mexico City, the wagons of the quartermaster and commissary officers, and the extra horses and mules. Lastly came the camp followers with their wagons and saddle horses. Those men and women seemed as anxious as the soldiers to return to the States.

The caravan was approaching the last mountain pass and beyond that the going would be easier. So far Lee and his men had had only one landslide to clear off the road and one bridge to strengthen. He praised the skill of the Spanish engineers that had done the original construction.

From the first day after leaving Mexico City, Lee had observed soldiers dropping out of ranks and disappearing into the forest. The rate of desertion was increasing as the distance from Mexico City grew. Butler and Patterson were informed, however they forbade the provost marshals pursuing and attempting to arrest the runaways. Lee believed the deserters would return to Mexico City, where many had girlfriends, and join the well-paid Legion of Foreigners that President Pena was hiring to guard the National Palace as soon as the Yankees had gone, a sort of Swiss Guard like that which protected the French Bourbon kings, and the Catholic pope.

In the early afternoon on May 9, 1848, Patterson's army reached Veracruz. On the outskirts of the town, Lee spotted a white pony in a pasture beside the road, and thinking it would make a nice homecoming present for his children, turned aside to see if he could buy it. The grizzled old Mexican agreed to sell when Lee flashed six silver dollars before his eyes. Lee directed Connally to take the pony in tow and see that it was put aboard the transport ship with Lee's horse.

El vomito had arrived and lay with its deadly hand upon the town and Patterson hurried his troops along the main street past the whitewashed houses, the central plaza, the town's largest church, and onward to the docks. The harbor was crowded with every pier lined with ships, every anchorage in use, and ships occupying all the open water from Veracruz to Isle de Sacrificios.

Most of the vessels were American with a wide variety of sizes, hull shapes, and rigging. Some score of them were steamships, the preponderance were sailing ships. Lee thought the army purchasing agents must have contracted all the ships on the southern coast of the States to transport the soldiers and their weapons home. Still he knew there weren't enough vessels to do the job. The division coming last down from the mountains would have a long wait.

Lee, with Beauregard, McClellan, and Tower and the others of the engineering company went aboard the Steamship Portland that would carry them to New Orleans. Beauregard came to stand beside Lee as the stevedores and seamen loaded the horses and other personal possessions of the engineers and the other officers assigned to the Portland. On the wharf the quartermasters and their men were busy inventorying the thousands of governmental items in their charge and dismantling the wagons and weapons for compact stowing aboard the ships. Their tasks would keep them here for days.

“We fought a war and are going home all in one piece,” Beauregard said.

“I think my wife and kids may approve of that.” Lee had been away from the States twenty-one months during which he had journeyed long distances upon the sea and across a foreign land. The time had contained periods of calm, of storm, of bivouac, of battle and death. And as for death, he had come close to it many times, yet had escaped while men nearby had died. He had been wounded, but only slightly, had caught no diseases and was in excellent health.

He had learned much in the war; that reconnaissance and planning and audacious officers leading well-trained men won battles. That to engage in war was to attack for no victories could be won holed up in a fort or city. A defensive position was only to gain time and opportunity to resume the offensive. He had seen bravery in men that he would never forget. Regardless of all the wrongs of the war, it had solidified his role as an army man.

Now it was time to turn away from a warrior's life in a foreign land where he had felt free and life enjoyable to the highest order even in the times of battle. Now he must return and accept the tasks of father and husband, at least be as much of a father and husband as his military duties and his nature would allow. A pleasant feeling of anticipation at seeing his wife and children came over him.

The captain shouted from the bridge and the lines holding the ship to the dock were cast off. The throb of the steam engine pistons grew louder, water swirled along the ship's side as it pulled away from the dock.

*

In the darkness of the late Mexican night of June 12, Grant sat slouched in the old wicker chair in the quiet garden at the rear of the monastery. This was a place he often came to loaf and enjoy the quiet hours. Also it was where he had spent so many pleasant hours studying Spanish with the gentle monk Sebastian. He breathed the fragrance of the flowers that were in full bloom and watched the diamond stars drift across the ebony sky. Close above him a lone bat wheeled and dove and chased the nighttime insects through the black air.

All was as it should be. Yet Grant felt unsettled because a great adventure was coming to an end. His brigade would be leaving Mexico City in a few hours. He would be glad to see Julia, yes indeed, but knowing that he would never journey this way again left a strange emptiness in his heart. He hadn't expected that.

He remembered Char and her gay laughter, and her lovely body that she so willingly gave him. Julia would never know about her for there were some things a man should not tell a betrothed, or a wife. As the years passed he would recall those days from that special place in his memory where he kept his secrets and relive them through his inner eye. Nothing was ever totally lost until all memory of it had been erased by death.

One truth came very clear to Grant, a man must participate in important events, to engage in outrageous adventures so that he would have them to marvel at when he was old and to frail to ever do them again. And he would smile in wonderment and think, had he really done such foolish things, or maybe if he had been lucky, had he truly performed such brave deeds. He was only twenty-six years old. Should the opportunity present itself to join in a future campaign of importance, he would seize it with the utmost gusto.

He saw a pale yellow light from Valere's lamp brighten the window in the man's quarters just a stone's throw away. Morning was near and Valere would shortly have food ready for the day's march. Grant rose from the wicker chair for the last time and went into his quarters to prepare for the long journey to the sea.

*

By noon of the day of July 21, every cannon, horse, musket, pound of gunpowder powder, saber, medical supplies and instruments, and even the horseshoes and army eating utensils had been counted and recorded in the proper category, carried aboard the transport ships, and stowed away in the holds or lashed down on the decks. The ships began to pull away from the docks.

On the deck of the last ship to depart, Grant rested, smelling the hot tainted air of the waterfront. On the docks, the brown skinned stevedores that he had hired to help load the ships stared after them. Overhead the buzzards sailed in their eternal circling and looking down for death below. The Americans had given them plenty of death.

The steamer came alive with a rumble of the steam engines and a quiver of her decks. The big side-paddlewheels began to spin and the vessel pulled away from the dock.

The strip of blue Gulf between the ship and shore widened and the smell of the waterfront vanished. The western wind that overflowed the city brought the true scent of the land down to Grant; the heavy vanilla perfume of acacia, the spicy fragrance of uncountable flower blossoms, the odor of hundreds of species of tropical plants decomposing, and all blending together into a smell he would never forget. Then a few hundred turns of the paddlewheels and there was only the moist, briny air of the sea in his lungs. All that remained of Mexico was the Starry Mountain, Orizaba, its snowy cap suspended there between the earth and sky.

The Treaty at Guadalupe Hidalgo gave the United States the land that now encompasses all of Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas.

One year after the treaty was signed, gold was discovered in California and then began the greatest gold rush the world has ever seen.

Lee remained in the military. At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, General Scott, still Commander and Chief of the army, recommended to Lincoln that he appoint Lee as the commanding general of the Union Army. Lincoln made the offer, but Lee declined it and went south to fight with the Confederate Army.

Grant went into private business after his required term with the military ended. President Lincoln recalled him to active duty in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War. Following their service together in the Mexican War, Lee and Grant never saw each other until April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Court House.

General Zachary Taylor beat out General Scott for the candidacy of the Whig Party and went on to be elected president after Polk's term ended in 1848.