The Man Who Saved the Union (7 page)

The reassignment to Scott’s army injected new life into the regiment. “
As soon as Gen. Scott took command, everything was changed,” Grant told Julia in early 1847. The officers cracked the men into trim, and central Mexico beckoned even as it threatened. “At Vera Cruz we will probably have a desperate fight but our little Army goes so much better prepared than it has ever done before that there is no doubt as to the result. I fear, though, that there is so much pride in the Mexican character that they will not give up even if we should take every town in the Republic.”

The regiment marched from Monterrey to the mouth of the Rio Grande, where they awaited naval transport to Vera Cruz. The ships arrived after several weeks, and Grant boarded the
North Carolina
with four hundred of his fellows. The voyage was rough. “
A great part of the time we have had a very heavy sea and often you would think the ship would capsize,” he told Julia. Grant discovered to his relief that he wasn’t prone to seasickness. Meanwhile, though, several soldiers displayed the unmistakable symptoms of smallpox, putting the rest of the army on edge and reminding everyone of the other diseases endemic to the coast. “We will have to get out of this part of Mexico soon or we will be caught by the yellow fever, which I am ten to one more afraid of than the Mexicans,” Grant wrote Julia.

The American fleet consisted of sailing ships primarily, but one vessel was a steam-powered dispatch boat driven by a propeller. Most of the men had seen river steamers pushed by paddle wheels, and a smaller number had seen ocean steamers, similarly driven by paddle wheels, which made a great commotion with their noise and splashing. The propeller boat overtook the sailing ships with little noise, no splashing and
barely a wake. “
Why, the thing looks as if it was propelled by the force of circumstances,” one of Grant’s fellow officers remarked.

The landing at Vera Cruz, via surfboats ordered built by Scott for the purpose, went smoothly. The Mexicans might easily have disrupted the operation, but they contented themselves with desultory artillery fire from a fort above the beach. One shot decapitated an American major, but the others fell short.

Vera Cruz frowned formidably upon the invaders. “
The city is a solid, compact place, the houses generally built of stone and two or three stories high,” Grant recorded. “The whole place is enclosed by a stone wall of about fifteen feet in height and four or five feet thick.”

Scott decided not to waste American lives assaulting the town. Instead he besieged it, constructing a cordon from the shore north of the town through sand hills on the west and back to the shore at the south. Scott had his engineers build artillery emplacements and then issued an ultimatum to the Mexican commander,
Juan Morales, to surrender the city. When Morales refused, Scott ordered the American gunners to open fire.

For three days the Americans rained solid shot and explosive shells upon the city. On the afternoon of the third day foreign consuls in the city asked Scott to suspend the bombardment long enough for foreigners, women and children to be evacuated. Scott refused, saying they could have left upon his ultimatum to Morales. The consuls thereupon appealed to Morales to surrender the town. He agreed, on the condition that his men be paroled and the rights of civilians in the city be respected by the conquerors. Scott granted the condition and took the city.

T
he victory came none too soon, from the American perspective. Some of Scott’s lieutenants, fearing a long siege, had urged him to order an assault. Against the larger losses an assault would entail they balanced the likelihood of an epidemic among the troops should they remain on the coast when the fever season arrived. The Americans all knew of the
vomito—
yellow fever—and they not unreasonably dreaded it. Scott guessed that the siege wouldn’t last long, and he was gratified when events proved him correct.

The road inland from the coast was one of the oldest and most storied routes in the history of the Americas. It was the path
Cortez had followed in the early sixteenth century on his way to defeating the
Aztecs
and seizing Mexico for Spain, and it had been an artery for commerce ever since. Grant was impressed. “
From Vera Cruz to this place the road is one of the best, and one that probably cost more labor than any other in the world,” he wrote Julia from a point a hundred miles inland. The road climbed steadily, carrying the Americans from the torrid coast to a perennially temperate region where elevation offset the strength of the tropic sun. “The climate is said to be the best in the world,” Grant noted, and in April he was willing to credit the claim. “It is never so warm as to be uncomfortable nor so cold as to make a fire necessary.”

The approach of the Americans compelled Mexico’s ablest commander to try to cut them off. Antonio López de Santa Anna had been in and out of office more times than most of his compatriots could remember. He was living in exile in
Cuba at the outbreak of fighting on the Rio Grande in 1846, but with a promise to negotiate an end to the hostilities, he persuaded the Polk administration to allow him through the American blockade of the Mexican coast. He forgot his promise on reaching Mexican soil and rallied the army and people against the invaders. He hurried north from the capital to challenge
Zachary Taylor, who, refusing to be Polk’s pawn and Scott’s coat holder, had advanced from Monterrey toward central Mexico.

The two armies met at
Buena Vista, just south of Saltillo. Santa Anna’s force outnumbered Taylor’s, but Taylor had the better position, with mountains guarding his flanks. In two days of bloody fighting Taylor’s men inflicted heavy casualties on the Mexicans, sufficient to make Santa Anna withdraw but not so grievous as to allow Taylor to continue south. Taylor treated the outcome as a triumph and headed back to the United States to accept the Whig nomination for president.

Santa Anna returned south to fend off Scott, who, as luck would have it, was approaching Santa Anna’s birthplace and hometown, Jalapa, on the road from Vera Cruz to Mexico City. Grant looked forward to the collision, albeit not as much as he might have. After tasting battle on the Rio Grande and at Monterrey, he felt confined by his quartermaster’s duties. He wrote to his commanding officer requesting permission to relinquish his assignment. “
I
must
and
will
accompany my regiment in battle,” Grant insisted. He threatened to do so even if he was not replaced as quartermaster. He realized he would be leaving the stores in his care unguarded, but he had an answer, of sorts. “I am amenable to court-martial should any loss occur to the public property in my charge by reason of my absence while in action.”

Grant’s superior appreciated the sentiment but was unimpressed by the logic. “
Lieutenant Grant is informed that the duty of Quartermaster and Commissary is an
assigned
duty, and not an
office
that can be resigned,” he responded. “However valuable his services might be, and certainly would be, in
line
, his services in his present assigned duties cannot be dispensed with.”

Consequently Grant had to watch while others got the thrilling tasks. Santa Anna selected to make his stand in a narrow pass by the village of
Cerro Gordo, near a mountain of the same name just west of Jalapa. The Mexicans blocked the road upon which the Americans were approaching and placed artillery on the surrounding elevations. To attack Santa Anna head-on would have been suicidal.

So Scott sent scouts behind the ridges the Mexicans controlled. Robert E. Lee, a handsome captain of engineers from Virginia who had graduated from West Point fourteen years before Grant and many places higher in his class, and who was widely deemed the most promising officer in the army, led a reconnaissance north of Santa Anna’s position. Lee ventured far into the territory held by the Mexicans and at one point found himself alone and surrounded by the enemy near a spring to which they regularly resorted. Lee ducked under a fallen log to escape detection, only to have some of the Mexicans approach and sit on the very log under which he was hiding. He held his breath, and held his spot till darkness allowed him to escape.

He returned to the American camp with word that it might be possible for an American column to slip behind the ridges, improve the route he had discovered and attack the Mexican positions from the rear. This intelligence became the basis for Scott’s battle plan and for the battle itself. “
Perhaps there was not a battle of the Mexican war, or of any other, where orders issued before an engagement were nearer being a correct report of what afterwards took place,” Grant wrote admiringly many years and battles later. “Under the supervision of the engineers, roadways had been opened over chasms to the right where the walls were so steep that men could barely climb them. Animals could not. These had been opened under cover of night, without attracting the notice of the enemy. The engineers, who had directed the opening, led the way and the troops followed. Artillery was let down the steep slopes by hand, the men engaged attaching a strong rope to the rear axle and letting the guns down, a piece at a time, while the men at the ropes kept their ground on top, paying out gradually, while a few at the front directed the course of
the piece. In like manner the guns were drawn by hand up the opposite slopes.” The guns were placed behind the Mexican entrenchments, which were undefended on that side.

The American artillery opened fire on the Mexican positions. “
It was war pyrotechnics of the most serious and brilliant character,” Grant wrote at the time. The artillery barrage covered the advance of American infantry. “I stood there watching the brigade slowly climbing those ragged heights, each minute nearer and nearer the works of the enemy with our missiles flying over their heads, while white puffs of smoke spitefully flashed out in rapid succession along the enemy’s line, and I knew that every discharge sent death into our ranks.” Grant wished more than ever to be at the front. “While it was a most inspiring sight, it was a painful one to me.… As our men finally swept over and into the works, my heart was sad at the fate that held me from sharing in that brave and brilliant assault.”

But he shared the joy of the victory. “
As soon as the Mexicans saw this height taken, they knew the day was up with them,” he wrote an Ohio friend. “Santa Anna vamoosed with a small part of his force leaving about 6000 to be taken prisoner with all their arms, supplies &c. Santa Anna’s loss could not have been less than 8000 killed, wounded, taken prisoners and missing. The pursuit was so close upon the retreating few that Santa Anna’s carriage and mules were taken and with them his wooden leg and some 20 or 30 thousand dollars in money.”

These first estimates were too high; Santa Anna’s losses were about half what Grant reported. But the meaning of the American victory was plain. “Between the thrashing the Mexicans have got at Buena Vista, Vera Cruz, and Cerro Gordo,” he wrote his Ohio friend, “they are so completely broken up that if we only had transportation we could go to the City of Mexico and where ever else we liked without resistance.”

6

I
N FACT TRANSPORTATION WAS NOT ALL THAT WAS REQUIRED.
M
UCH
of Scott’s army consisted of volunteers, many of whom had enlisted for terms about to expire. Scott couldn’t compel them to remain beyond their terms, and few showed much inclination to do so. Rather than start for Mexico City and lose half his army at the gates of the capital, he discharged the current crop of enlistees early, in order that they clear Vera Cruz and the coastal lowlands before the fever season began, and awaited the arrival of their replacements.

The delay gave Grant time to miss Julia more than ever. The army occupied Puebla, which brought her home to mind. “
It surpasses St. Louis by far both in appearance and size,” he wrote her of Puebla. “It contains from 80 to 90 thousand inhabitants. The houses are large and well built.” The people were all Catholic. “At a certain ring of the church bell or when the senior Priest of the place passes, you might see them on their knees in the streets all over the city.” The climate was nearly perfect. “This place from its elevation is very healthy and much more pleasant both in summer and winter, so far as climate is concerned, than Jefferson Barracks.”

But St. Louis had Julia and Puebla did not. “The night after I received your last letter I dreamed that I had been ordered on the recruiting service and was near where you were,” he wrote. “In my dream, I said now I have often dreamed of being near my dear Julia but this time it is no dream for here are houses I recollect well, and it is only two days travel to St. Louis. But when I woke up on the morning and found that it was but a dream after all, how disappointed I was!”

He began to wish he had never gone to war. “How much, my Dearest
Julia, I regret that I had not taken my Father’s advice and resigned long ago. Now, no doubt, I would have been comfortably in business and been always near one of whom I am always thinking and whom I love better than all the world besides.” He might yet resign. “In the course of a few months more I will see you again if it costs me my commission, which by the way I value very low, for I have been a very long time balancing in my mind whether I should resign or not.”

H
e didn’t resign but marched to Mexico City instead. Santa Anna unexpectedly declined to challenge the Americans on their route from Puebla, and after three days Scott’s advance guard crested the pass that opened upon the Valley of Mexico. Several volcanoes ringed the valley, the highest being Popocatepetl, which commanded the southern horizon. Three large lakes and some smaller ones occupied the valley floor; beyond the lakes lay Mexico City. The main road to the capital ran between two of the large lakes, which served as partial moats. Santa Anna filled the gap between the lakes with trenches and troops.

Scott accordingly left the main road and skirted to the south. Santa Anna detected the maneuver and repositioned his defenders. Scott skirted further, after additional reconnaissance by Robert E. Lee. On August 20 the Americans engaged the Mexicans at the neighboring villages of
Contreras and
Churubusco and inflicted demoralizing defeats on the defenders, although at considerable cost.