The Training Ground (8 page)
Privately, Grant wondered what would happen if he was wrong. There was talk that captured Americans would be marched to prisoner-of-war camps hundreds of miles south. There were also rumors that opposition general Ampudia was fond of boiling prisoners’ heads in oil.
Grant found solace — and denial — in the reality that Mexico and the United States were not actually at war. So while the Mexicans “hovered about in such great numbers that it was not safe to send a wagon train after supplies,” it was easy to blame the deaths of Porter and (presumably) Cross on bandits or accidents and not soldiers and to believe that there had been no real hostilities. With an optimism born of lovesick naïveté, Grant continued to hope that the dispute could be settled diplomatically.
That was not to be.
On April 23, Mexico secretly declared war on the United States. On April 24, Major General Mariano Arista arrived in Matamoros to relieve Ampudia as commander of Mexico’s Army of the North. The red-haired Arista, who spoke fluent English and had once lived along the Ohio River very close to Grant’s hometown, wasted no time showing why he had been entrusted with such a conspicuous command. By three o’clock that afternoon, Taylor’s scouts were reporting that Mexican forces were mobilizing to cross the Rio Grande upriver and downriver of the new fort. Dragoon patrols soon trotted out of the American camp to see if the rumors were true. Grant, like the rest of the infantry, stayed behind. It had been a somber afternoon. There had been a funeral procession for Colonel Cross, whose body had been found, stripped and battered almost beyond recognition. The scene was made all the more wrenching by the sight of Cross’s distraught son, who was also a soldier, marching alongside the flag-draped casket, and Cross’s horse being led to the grave site. The animal was draped in black, with Cross’s empty boots placed backward in the stirrups, according to military custom, signifying a horse whose rider has died.
The time for mere saber rattling was past. War between the United States and Mexico was about to begin.
Fields of Fire
A
PRIL 25, 1846
C
aptain William Joseph Hardee, a southern Georgian by birth, was tall and lean, with pale blue eyes and a courtly manner — as well as a modish French cut to his upturned mustache and thick billow of narrow beard that made the ladies swoon. The epitome of the dashing cavalry officer, Hardee was certainly no pencil-pushing engineer. He was a warrior through and through, fiery and opinionated, educated in the military arts at West Point, infatuated and engrossed by the smartest ways to trap and kill men. Hardee was one of those select souls who would be utterly lost when there was no war to fight, predestined to spend his life as a mercenary or a tactician for hire, anything to apply his considerable mental and physical prowess to making the world a better — or, depending upon which side you were on, more violent — place in which to live.
Since having graduated from West Point in 1838, he had already put this knowledge to use during two years of fighting the Seminoles in Florida with the Second Dragoons. His daring and intellect had come to the attention of no less than American secretary of war Joel Roberts Poinsett, who ordered Hardee to the elite French military school at Saint-Maur for courses in advanced cavalry tactics. Of the 637 officers currently serving in the U.S. Army in April 1846, few had greater tactical awareness.
So Hardee’s first instinct, as the men of the Second Dragoons approached the large rancho on the Rio Grande to investigate rumors of Mexican troop movements in Carricitos, was to be cautious. There was just one gate leading in and out of the property, which meant that once he and the rest of the cavalry entered, they could easily be trapped. In fact, the opening wasn’t a gate at all but a narrow passage through an impenetrable tangle of scrub grass and mesquite that surrounded the ranch house on three sides. The fourth side, of course, was the Rio Grande itself. The river here was wide and swift and an unsound avenue of escape. To Hardee’s trained eye, the ranch was a place where an army could easily be penned in and slaughtered.
The smart move would have been to send a small scouting party inside to search for the Mexican troops, while holding the bulk of the mounted force outside the ranch to keep a sharp eye out for a surprise attack. But Captain Seth Thornton, Hardee’s commanding officer, was unworried, convinced that there were no enemy soldiers in the area. He ordered his entire outfit, sixty-three men in all, to follow him into the ranch so that he might question the owners.
Hardee was bone-tired. The dragoons had ridden through the night, traveling almost forty miles in the darkness. They had stopped only to grab a few hours’ sleep and breakfast, then mounted up once again at dawn. Now they were drowsy and impatient, eager to make a cursory pass through the bottomlands along the river before trotting back to tell Taylor that the rumors were false.
Hardee was the son of a son of a soldier, with a grandfather who had fought in the Revolutionary War and a father who had served in the War of 1812. He knew that fatigue made men lower their guard, even in war, when the need to be vigilant was greatest. So despite his lack of sleep, he grew nervous as the train of dragoons rode through the narrow gap in the mesquite. “The whole guard entered in single file, without any guard being placed in front,” he noted, “or any other precautions taken to prevent surprise. Captain Thornton was prepossessed with the idea that the Mexicans had not crossed, and if they had, they would not fight.”
Hardee rode in the rear of the column and was the last man to enter the rancho, or “plantation,” as he thought of it, having grown up on an estate known as Rural Felicity, deep in cotton country. Here, the main house was two hundred yards inside the “fence,” which was made of thick natural vegetation covered in thorns. Hardee trotted his horse up to the porch. He knocked. No one was home.
The dragoons spread out to search for someone who might answer questions about troop movements in the area. “At last,” Hardee wrote, “an old man was found.” Thornton rode over to question the elderly gentleman. The morning was calm. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary — for a moment or two. But then one of the dragoons turned to the east and saw a most terrifying sight: Mexican soldiers, too many for him to count, and all marching smartly toward the Americans. “The cry of alarm was given, and the enemy were seen in numbers,” Hardee later wrote, with a great deal of understatement. The Georgian whirled his horse. A sixteen-hundred-man contingent of Mexican cavalry, light infantry, and sappers had surrounded the rancho and were pouring in through the lone entrance. The Second Dragoons weren’t just trapped; they were moments away from being annihilated.
Thornton, acting quickly, led a frantic charge toward the gate. It was their only hope of escaping alive. The attack failed as soon as it began, with the Mexicans firing several rapid volleys at the approaching horsemen. Thus the men of the Second Dragoons, one of the army’s most elite fighting forces, panicked. All sense of organization was lost. They galloped their horses up and down the fence, desperate to save themselves. Unit brotherhood was a thing of the past. Thornton led the retreat, such as it was, racing along the perimeter, frantically searching for a second opening. The Mexican firing never ceased.
Hardee galloped his horse to Thornton, thinking he had a solution — the only solution — to their life-and-death dilemma. Both were young men, on the cusp of thirty. They had been together at West Point and had fought alongside each other in the Seminole Wars. They had learned a great deal about warfare in their short lives, but nothing had prepared them for being surrounded by a fighting force that outnumbered them thirty to one, trapped inside a preposterous natural barrier, with absolutely no way out.
Hardee caught up to his classmate. Their horses were at full gallop as he screamed that their only hope was to dismount and hack through the chaparral barrier with their cavalry sabers. Thornton seemed to agree, but with the resignation of a commanding officer who had lost all control: the terrified dragoons had refused when Thornton ordered them to stand and fight. There seemed little chance they’d listen now.
Nostalgia was a thing of the past. Hardee took control. “The direction which Captain Thornton was pursuing would lead to the certain destruction of himself and his men, without possibility of resistance, [so] I turned to the right and told the men to follow me. I made for the river, intending to either swim it or place myself in position of defense.” Twenty-five men followed Hardee down to the Rio Grande. They had no other choice: if they wanted to live, the river was their only way out.
Yet swimming was out of the question. The river was shallow near the bank, with a muddy bottom so soft that the horses began sinking down into the muck. Venturing farther out — whether in the saddle or on foot in an attempt to swim — might mean getting hopelessly stuck, making horses and riders easy targets for even the most pitiful enemy marksman.
Hardee spun away from the Rio Grande. The time had come to stand and fight. He could hear the battle raging near the farmhouse. Thornton and his men were being cut down, but the Mexican infantry hadn’t yet advanced to the river, giving the Georgian time to plan. He assembled the dragoons, lining them abreast along the riverbank, then checking each man’s armament, one by one, to make sure that they were prepared for battle. Each had started the day with the standard weaponry issued to all American cavalry: an 1840-model cavalry saber, a single-shot pistol, and an 1843-model breech-loading carbine (loaded from the rear of the barrel, as opposed to tamping a charge down from the forward opening).
Hardee was shocked to discover that many soldiers had dropped their weapons during the retreat. Theirs would be, unfortunately, a suicide charge. “Almost everyone had lost a saber, a pistol, or carbine. Nevertheless, the men were firm and disposed, if necessary to fight to the last extremity,” he noted.
It hadn’t been more than fifteen minutes since the American soldiers had marched onto the ranch. The battle itself was just five minutes old. Riderless American horses galloped in circles, their empty saddles attesting to the dragoons’ decimation. Thornton, miraculously, had escaped into the chaparral unseen. He now hid there, dust-covered and dripping sweat, peering through the thorns and bramble as Hardee and his men prepared to mount the final cavalry charge of their lives. Mexican horsemen ringed the chaparral to prevent Hardee’s escape. The infantry of Brigadier General Anastasio Torrejón walked haughtily to the river, guns leveled, ready to finish the Americans off.
Hardee reverted to his training.
It didn’t take a tactical genius to see that a charge would be futile. He and his men were surrounded and barely armed. The dragoons would be cut down in a hail of musket fire the instant they spurred their horses. He’d heard the rumors about Mexicans treating prisoners atrociously during their battles with the Texans, but Hardee knew what he had to do. “I went forward and arranged, with an officer, that I should deliver myself and my men as prisoners of war, to be treated with all the consideration to which such unfortunates are entitled by the rules of civilized warfare.”
With that, Hardee surrendered.
Bodies of American soldiers littered the ranchland as Hardee was marched to General Torrejón. One second lieutenant, a classmate of Longstreet’s named George T. Mason, lay dead in the green spring grass, a sword clutched in his right fist, killed as he tried to fight his way off the battlefield rather than surrender.
Hardee saw no sign of Thornton.
N
OT ALL OF
the dragoons had been slain, much to Hardee’s relief. In addition to his small force, twenty more men were in Mexican custody. When Hardee finally met face-to-face with Torrejón, he was prepared for the worst.
Torrejón was a mestizo. He had a hard and unattractive face and possessed a reputation for cunning and for setting traps. Hardee now knew that all too well. But Torrejón was also compassionate. The battle was through. He saw no need to butcher the Americans. Torrejón sent the prisoners back to Matamoros, where they were treated with cordial respect. Thornton was captured several days later and joined Hardee as a prisoner of war. They were lodged in a large hotel, where life was amazingly luxurious. Not only did they dine regularly with General Ampudia — the man reputed to boil heads in oil — but the Mexican army paid them a daily allowance equal to half their regular pay. General Arista “intended to supply all our wants himself,” wrote Hardee in a letter that was sent across the river to Taylor. “These promises have already been fulfilled in part.”
In fact, Hardee was living better than he would have on the American side of the Rio Grande, eating fresh food instead of salt pork out of a barrel, sleeping in a real bed instead of on a muddy bedroll, and having a roof over his head to keep him dry when thunderstorms came. This peaceful reverie would soon come to an end. Thanks to Thornton’s inept tactical blunder, Taylor dashed off an urgent message to Washington, asking for immediate reinforcements. The missive confirmed the news that President Polk had awaited so eagerly: “Hostilities may now be considered as to have commenced.”
Call to Battle
M
AY 3, 1846
T
o the brothers in arms along the Rio Grande, no triumphal call to battle marked the Mexican War’s official beginning. Nor did they have the benefit of an elaborately worded decree. The precise moment when each man realized that Mexico and the United States were shooting at each other in earnest was, in fact, unique. For Captain William Hardee, it came as Torrejón sprung his trap. General Zachary Taylor’s war began when he sent the courier galloping away from camp with that vindicating message for President Polk. And for Lieutenant Sam Grant, the first war of his young life began at dawn on a Sunday, as he lay sleeping.
It was just moments before the regimental bugler would blow reveille. Once again Grant huddled in a grimy white tent on a fly-choked Texas beach, but instead of Corpus Christi, it was the coastal supply depot of Port Isabel. The fort was finally finished. Taylor had marched the bulk of his army twenty-seven miles east to the Gulf of Mexico. His stated intent was to pick up provisions and armament — which he would indeed do. But the maneuver was also Taylor’s cagey attempt to draw the Mexicans away from the fort. He wanted to fight them out in the open on a proper battlefield, rather than in what it was increasingly apparent was an Alamo-like setting that robbed the Americans of mobility and cavalry.
As Grant opened his eyes to greet the day, the sound he heard most powerfully was not the soft crash of Texas breakers or the early morning warble of seagulls but the distant rumble of a prolonged and hostile artillery bombardment. “As we lay in our tents along the sea shore, the artillery at the fort on the Rio Grande could be distinctly heard,” he wrote of that moment. “The war had begun.”
A skeleton force had stayed behind to defend the newly finished earthworks along the Rio Grande (referred to sometimes as Fort Taylor but more often as Fort Texas). It comprised the Seventh Infantry and a detachment of artillery specialists, all under the command of Major Jacob Brown. The Seventh had earned the nickname the Cotton Balers for allegedly taking cover behind cotton bales during the Battle of New Orleans. This group of roughly five hundred men now crouched behind walls fifteen feet thick, armed with four behemoth eighteen-pound cannons and a much less lethal battery of six-pound guns under the command of Lieutenant Braxton Bragg.
Grant knew the two men by reputation only. Brown was that rare officer who hadn’t graduated from West Point, having enlisted during the War of 1812 and worked his way up through the ranks. He was in his midfifties, old for a major, and his career had been undistinguished and unsullied, spent in backwater postings like Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Little Rock, Arkansas. Yet Brown was beloved by his men, and the sort of quietly confident leader who was sure to remain calm as the enemy lay siege to the army’s newest fortress.
Bragg was different. The North Carolinian was a tyrant, despised by his troops for his fanaticism about discipline and protocol. He had finished fifth in the West Point class of 1837, which had graduated more than a dozen future generals — a startling figure, given that it comprised just fifty men. Bragg was lean like a knife’s blade, tall, with iron gray eyes, great bushy eyebrows, and a sharp, unshaven chin whose point was accentuated by whiskers extending clear down both sides of his face to the jawbone. He was prone to depression, hypochondria, boils, and chronic diarrhea. Strangely, despite all this, women found him to be extremely charming. Bragg could display a sly sense of humor to those he pursued. Among his men, however, such attributes might be spoken of but were never witnessed.
Bragg’s character was potentially assailable, but his ability and intellect were not. Actually, he was something of a military genius. Bragg’s specialty was artillery, which seemed like nothing more than a fancy word for cannons to nonmilitary observers. Such naïveté denied the complexity of nineteenth-century weaponry. There were large cannons for heavy bombardment and fort defense, small cannons for mobile battlefield use, and mortars for lobbing shells great distances. There were cast-iron cannons and the more lightweight bronze cannons. There were guns and howitzers; solid cannonballs, artillery shells, hollowed cannonballs filled with explosives, canister rounds, and those deadly bundles of shot known as grape.
Bragg was adept at mobilizing and firing all of these weapons. Yet his favorite was the six-pounder (guns took their name from the heft of the solid cannonball that fit most snugly in their muzzle), the smallest cannon in the modern American military arsenal. Those small guns were perfect for battlefield use — light, horse-drawn, joyously mobile — and were quite effective against an army marching shoulder to shoulder into battle. But a six-pounder could inflict only minimal damage against heavy fortifications; if and when soldiers of the Mexican army swarmed the walls of Fort Texas, those guns would be ideal for close combat, spraying them with lethal rounds of canister and grapeshot. Until then, it would be up to the behemoth eighteen-pounders to lob down hellfire on the Mexican positions across the river. Eighteens were capable of demolishing almost anything. It was hoped those big guns could destroy just enough of Mexico’s defensive positions for the fort to hold out until Taylor’s return.
Scouts galloping into Port Isabel soon reported that Mexican troops had taken up a blocking position on the only road leading back to Fort Texas. That was good news to Taylor, for the Mexicans were now out in the open, right where he wanted them.
Not so for Grant. He was terrified and repulsed by the distant belch of cannons. He had no desire to fight; not in the open or huddled behind a bunker. He felt certain he wasn’t cut out for war. “For myself, a young second lieutenant who had never heard a hostile gun before, I felt sorry that I had enlisted,” he finally confessed. Yet Grant’s conviction that once he started something, he must continue forward until the thing was through, was stronger than any impulse to flee. The only way of relieving Brown, Bragg, and the Seventh Infantry — and returning home to Julia — was by pushing the Mexican forces back across the Rio Grande. Like it or not, war was Grant’s destiny.
He wrote to Julia. More than anything, he wanted to be sitting with her on the front porch at White Haven. “As soon as this is over, I will write to you again. That is, if I am one of the fortunate individuals who escape,” he said, trying to reassure her but failing miserably. “You don’t know how anxious I am to see you again, Julia.”
It crossed his mind that the letter might be his last.