JANUARY–MAY 1847
On May 21, 1847, the advance guard of Colonel Alexander Doniphan’s 1st Missouri Mounted Infantry pitched camp at San Juan, fifteen miles from Brigadier General John E. Wool’s headquarters at Buena Vista. Doniphan’s men had just trekked across 3,500 miles of barren wasteland, having left Missouri in June 1846 as part of Stephen Kearny’s force. From Santa Fe they had ridden independently through El Paso, Chihuahua, and Parras. They had withstood all the hazards and discomforts of frontier travel—ice, sleet, heat, lack of water—for long stretches.
Though Doniphan’s men had endured much, their feat was not, in itself, unique in the Mexican War. But “Doniphan’s March” was destined to become famous in history for several reasons. For one, Doniphan’s force consisted entirely of a single volunteer regiment, operating under a volunteer colonel. And timing was fortuitous; the regiment returned home just before the rest of the one-year volunteer units. But most of all, the march was to become famous by the personality of the extraordinary man who led them.
Not only morally but physically Alexander Doniphan was a big man, described by an awed admirer as towering nearly six and a half feet, and weighing over 240 pounds. His fingers were said to be nine inches long, and he had feet to match. His sandy red hair stuck out “like porcupine quills,” and his men claimed that he was “not afraid of the Devil or the God that made him.”1 And yet Doniphan was a man possessed of a certain sense of humor and habitually wore a smile; he unabashedly lavished a manly tenderness on the troops who had unanimously elected him to his position, and he made them feel that they shared in his decisions. His leadership was of the frontier variety, not that assiduously taught at West Point.
Doniphan had been a famous trial lawyer in Missouri, one of the best, and had commanded several militia regiments before the war. Though respectful to his military superiors as a rule, he once proved his moral fiber by his open defiance of an order directing him to execute a group of Mormons condemned for treason and had made his defiance stick.* Only such a man as Doniphan could have led an unlikely group of volunteers to perform as his did.
After the Battle of the Brazito at Christmas, 1846, Doniphan’s force settled into El Paso for a rest. While there Doniphan received word that Wool, whom he was supposed to join at Chihuahua, had now been sent to Saltillo rather than to Chihuahua as originally planned. Santa Anna, Doniphan learned, was posing a threat to Taylor in the latter’s stretched-out position, and Wool was going to Saltillo to reinforce him.
While the prospect of action excited Doniphan, Wool’s absence at Chihuahua created a problem. Doniphan was stranded, alone, at El Paso, contributing nothing to the prosecution of the war. He had the choice, therefore, of either retracing his steps to Santa Fe or of continuing on to Chihuahua, where, he had heard, a large Mexican force was collecting. The march forward would be much the bolder course.
Doniphan had his own way of making such a decision: he put it to a vote among his men. The men, undoubtedly influenced by Doniphan’s own preference, voted to push on to Chihuahua. So Doniphan determined to do just that, but only after Major Merriwether Lewis Clark, commander of the Missouri artillery, could join him. Without that artillery, an expedition to Chihuahua would be not merely bold but suicidal.
When Clark and Captain Richard H. Weightman arrived at El Paso with six pieces of artillery in early February, Doniphan was ready to head out. Along with the 924 men of his formal command, he took with him the train of traders and teamsters he had picked up at Ververde, organizing them into an irregular fighting unit. The civilians in his party made up a train of 315 wagons over and above those belonging to the companies and commissary.2 The expedition thus took on the aspect of a migration as well as of a military force.
Nor was there anything “military” about the conduct of the Missourians. Their camp was no showpiece. One civilian, an Englishman, remarked that, aside from a rough alignment of the tents, all uniformity in bivouac ceased. The camp, he noted, was “strewn with the bones and offal of the cattle slaughtered for its supply, and not the slightest attention was paid to keeping it clear from other accumulations of filth.” The men were “unwashed and unshaven, ragged and dirty.” Even sensible military precautions were ignored, as the men had, by vote, decreed that posting of lookouts at night was unnecessary. As a result, “one fine day three Navajo Indians ran off with a flock of eight hundred sheep belonging to the camp, killing the two volunteers in charge of them.” Mules and horses strayed over the country. “In fact,” the Englishman concluded, with a touch of superiority, “the most total want of discipline was apparent in everything.”3
But disciplined or not, Doniphan’s rabble survived extremes of climate and terrain in the course of the three-hundred-mile march to Chihuahua. They crossed two vast deserts, one of them sixty miles wide. Water was scarce, and so was game, but the area was rich in rattlesnakes, copperheads, tarantulas, and Mexican spies. The snakes and tarantulas could not be made to talk, but captured spies could. From them Doniphan learned that about seven hundred Mexican cavalry waited in his path. That seemed plausible, but for a long time no Mexican cavalry appeared as the Missourians marched southward.
As Doniphan approached, Mexican authorities in Chihuahua were facing a torn population. The people held the deep-seated hatred for the gringos that pervaded other parts of Mexico, but their hostility was mitigated by the very profitable trade that flourished between Chihuahua, Santa Fe, and thence eastward to Missouri. That trade did, indeed, provide much of the population’s livelihood, and the former governor of Chihuahua had been inclined to friendship with the Americans before the government in Mexico City had recalled him in August 1846.
The current governor was an active, ambitious man named Angel Trias, who rallied the population to resistance. For a while Trias made progress toward establishing a respectable defense, casting artillery pieces from local resources and training infantrymen to use them. However, as at Tampico, Santa Anna stepped in and began denuding the Zacatecas-Chihuahua region of regular troops in order to build the army for his expedition to Buena Vista. In spite of that, Trias believed that sufficient national guardsmen remained on hand at Chihuahua to repel any force of fewer than a thousand Americans.
With Doniphan’s approach in late February 1847, General García Condé arrived from Mexico City to take command of Chihuahua. By now Condé had accumulated about 1,500 infantry (some of them regulars), 1,200 cavalry, and 119 artillerymen manning ten brass cannon and nine musketoons. This force of nearly three thousand† bolstered Mexican confidence to the point that Condé actually filled a whole wagon with lariats, intending to tie the Missourians to their saddles after he had taken them prisoner.4
For all his bravado, García Condé realized that his troops were untrained, so he prudently elected to defend against the inferior American force rather than attack it. He selected a position about fifteen miles north of Chihuahua, just forward of the Sacramento River, on a plateau that lay between the river and a dry arroyo. Pushing out ahead of the river was an unconventional move, but the plateau provided a stronger defensive line than did the fordable river. The position lay in a gap only a mile and a half wide between two mountains, and the northern rim of the plateau, facing in Doniphan’s direction, presented a formidable sixty-foot wall, broken only by a single road. That wall was sufficiently precipitous, Condé believed, to force the Americans to keep their cumbersome wagons on the main road. Since the road ran right below an easily defended cut, Condé reasoned that Doniphan would be forced to reduce the strong position overlooking that cut—at unacceptable cost. Along that position, therefore, he placed three batteries, one behind another, all facing northwest to cover the anticipated American route.
Condé’s dispositions made excellent sense—so long as the Missourians stuck to the road. So certain was Condé that the Americans would not move across the tundra to the west that he left it undefended.
But Doniphan did not do as Condé expected. His force moved out at sunrise of Sunday, February 28, and soon scouts had discovered that the escarpment could be climbed even by wagons at a newly discovered point to the west. So as Doniphan’s force approached the arroyo he sent his cavalry screen in that direction, to mount the escarpment far beyond range of Condé’s guns. The rest of the command followed. Behind the cavalry the three hundred wagons were drawn up in four columns, with the bulk of the artillery and infantry concealed between the wagons. All depended on the ability of Doniphan’s men to haul the wagons from the gulch of the arroyo to the mesa above.‡
By early afternoon, after several hours of struggle and cursing, Doniphan’s men finally dragged all the wagons and artillery across the bottom of the arroyo and up the cliff. Then at 3 P.M. Condé’s cavalry (eight hundred men) detected the wagons on the plain and attacked. Clark’s and Weightman’s artillery quickly drove them back, and Doniphan advanced southeastward, to the rear corner of the Mexican position. His wagons retained formation, his artillery and infantry remained between the the wagons, and his cavalry led the way.
On came Doniphan’s four columns, bypassing the Mexican positions on his left. As he pulled within range, Doniphan trained his artillery on the rear corner of the Mexican position and concentrated fire on the decisive point while avoiding the bulk of the Mexican fire. Once that corner of the Mexican position was reduced, he turned northward and began picking off, one by one, the other positions in front of it.
Throughout the battle Doniphan’s tactics were unconventional, for he sent Weightman’s artillery forward, supported by his three companies of cavalry instead of the infantry. Coordination was admittedly ragged, but eventually the three artillery companies were successful in reducing the redoubts.§ The fighting was severe, hand to hand. Gun butts did their grisly work of bashing out brains. Many horses were shot, but miraculously only one American was killed outright,‖ and the Mexican position collapsed.
Doniphan, in his report, claimed that the enemy lost “his entire artillery, 10 wagons, masses of beans and pinola, and [apparently as an afterthought] three hundred killed and about the same number wounded.” Losses among the Missourians: one killed, one mortally wounded, seven “so wounded as to recover without the loss of any limbs.” And he added proudly, “Much had been said, and justly said, of the gallantry of our artillery, unlimbering within 250 yards of the enemy at Palo Alto; but how much more daring was the charge of Captain Weightman, when he unlimbered within fifty yards of the redoubts of the enemy.”5
Doniphan took formal possession of Chihuahua on March 1, 1847. As in camp, however, the American occupation was no spit-and-polish operation. In fact, since most of the townspeople had fled, Doniphan’s men simply moved into their houses and used them as they wished. Susan Magoffin, wife of the James Magoffin of Bent’s Fort, expressed shock in her celebrated diary as she described the scene. It was filled with Missouri volunteers “who though good to fight are not careful at all how much they soil the property of a friend much less an enemy.” She tended to take the side of “the good citizens of Chi” who, she lamented, had never dreamed that “their loved homes would be turned into quarters for common soldiers, their fine houses turned into stables, their public drinking fountain used as a bathing trough.” But the good Mrs. Magoffin was no democrat when it came to her own comforts. Though the Mexican homes were too good for the common soldiers, her party “took a comfortable house a square off from the plaza, as none could be had in it, and spent three weeks in it as pleasantly as we could under the circumstances.”6
Once ensconced in Chihuahua, Doniphan had to decide his next move. He had attained his prize but he could never, with a thousand men, subdue the country around it. Furthermore, as he was alone, without Wool’s force, he expected his position to become daily more dangerous. So he sent a side expedition to Durango to see if danger was threatening from the south, and waited.
The scouting expedition soon returned with reassurances that no Mexican force was threatening Chihuahua for the moment, but Doniphan was still impatient to leave Chihuahua. On March 20, therefore, he sent a message to Wool, whom he still considered his immediate commander. In the message he described his position as “exceedingly embarrassing.” Most of his men, he pleaded, had been in the service since the first of June 1846, during which time they had not received one cent of pay. They had now marched more than two thousand miles and, with their term of service nearly up, they were restless to return to Moclova and join Wool’s command.
Doniphan added that he could not leave Chihuahua safely for some days, and the American merchants, having several hundred thousand dollars at stake, were violently opposed to his leaving. Doniphan protested that he was “anxious and willing” to protect the merchants as far as he could, but he objected to remaining “as a mere wagon guard.” Always courteous, Doniphan assured his superior that he would obey any orders cheerfully, but (not yet having heard of Taylor’s victory at Buena Vista) feared that “there is ample use for us with you.” Above all, he wanted to join Wool before his regiment’s term of service expired.7
On receiving Doniphan’s letter, Wool sent it on to Taylor at Monterrey. Taylor, in turn, sent a copy on to Washington on April 4, advising that he was ordering Doniphan to join Wool. He confirmed that the traders with Doniphan would “have their election to remain in Chihuahua, or come under the protection of the column to Saltillo.”8
Doniphan, meanwhile, was doing all he could to ensure the safety of the civilians who would be staying behind. He made overtures to the Mexicans, proposing to “neutralize” Chihuahua if the merchants would be protected. He would commit the United States to evacuate the city and agree not to return, provided that the State of Chihuahua remained neutral.9 The Mexicans refused this offer, so when Taylor’s order reached him on April 25, Doniphan gave the merchants the choice Taylor had ordered. They could travel with Doniphan to Saltillo or they could remain. Many chose to go with him, but some remained behind at Chihuahua. Doniphan then called in the Mexican authorities and demanded a promise that they would treat the American residents of Chihuahua decently, threatening to return if they did not. The Mexicans were willing to promise informally, so Doniphan felt he had done everything possible.
Three days later Doniphan’s caravan began the march to Saltillo. On May 11 they reached Parras, where Wool had camped some months before. There Doniphan’s advance guard skirmished with a band of Lipan Indians, who had robbed a local ranch, carrying off women, children, and livestock. One of Doniphan’s companies ambushed the Indians and liberated the captives and the property. Doniphan thus repaid, in a way, the people of Parras for their earlier friendliness to Wool and their care of the sick that Wool had been forced to leave behind.a
Upon making contact with Wool’s outposts at Buena Vista, Reid’s men awaited the arrival of the rest of Doniphan’s column. When it arrived, Doniphan agreed to put on a military review for their immediate commander. To make his men look like conventional soldiers was impossible, but they were conscious that they were heroes, and they were proud. A military pedant would have scoffed at the review itself, but in the light of the accomplishments of this 1st Missouri, nobody dared. The ceremony was repeated a few days later back at Monterrey, this time for Zachary Taylor.
According to the law of May 1846, Doniphan’s men could have been retained at Monterrey until the end of their enlistments, the last day of May 1847. But they could be of no use; no enemy was anywhere near, and the men were eager to return home. So Taylor sent them back immediately, to be discharged and paid in New Orleans and sent home to warm welcomes.
Doniphan’s men were no unsung heroes. They were, in fact, feted extravagantly. Senator Thomas Hart Benton made a special journey from Washington to greet them with a speech of congratulations; sheet music was dedicated to them—the front cover picturing Doniphan in dashing full-dress uniform. William Cullen Bryant would compare Doniphan to Xenophon, whose ten thousand Greeks had made a similar excursion through Asia Minor in the fourth century B.C.
“Those two men,” wrote the editor of the New York Post, were “two military commanders who have made the most extraordinary marches known in the annals of warfare of their times.”10
* The order in question was Governor Lillburn W. Boggs’s “Extermination Order” of October 1838. “I will not obey your order,” Doniphan wrote his military superior. “My brigade shall march for Liberty tomorrow morning, and if you execute these men I will hold you responsible before an earthly tribunal, so help me God.” Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision, pp. 83–84.
† Justin Smith, The War with Mexico, vol. I, p. 306. Doniphan, in his report (Exec. Doc. No. 1, p. 501), saw the Mexican force a little differently, at 1,200 cavalry, 1,200 infantry, 300 artillerymen, and 1,420 rancheros. However, Smith’s figures come from Mexican sources. The counts of artillery pieces are consistent all around. These figures do not include the 1000 rancheros on hand.
‡ The four-abreast formation was common in the West. It avoided permitting one accident to hold up the entire column; it formed up easily for defense; and it reduced the number of drivers eating the others’ dust.
§ Doniphan to TAG, April 4, 1847, Exec. Doc. No. 1, p. 500. Captain Hudson “anticipated” Doniphan’s command and attacked on his own; Parsons specifically asked permission to charge.
‖ Either suffering from a death wish or remarkably poor judgment, Major Samuel C. Owens, one of the wagon irregulars, charged on horseback far out ahead of the rest, and he was cut down immediately.
a Reid Report, May 21, 1847, Exec. Doc. No. 60, p. 1144. The episode had a bizarre sequel. Adolph Wislizenus, a German “medical practitioner” freed by Doniphan at Chihuahua, came to the scene two days after the fight. Among the fifteen Indian corpses was a handsome medicine man. As the bodies were being left to the wolves, Wislizenus took home with him the skull of the medicine man. His journal made no mention of how he rendered the flesh of the medicine man’s face from his skull. Adolph Wislizenus, Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico, pp. 70–72.
