Overshadowed by the cataclysmic Civil War only thirteen years later, the Mexican War has been practically forgotten in the United States. Through the years, despite our growing interest in Mexico, it is rarely mentioned. And when the subject comes up, it nearly always deals with the questionable manner in which it came about. More specifically, was the United States right in sending Zachary Taylor to the Rio Grande in early 1846, thus provoking war with Mexico? Opinions vary.
Ulysses S. Grant, for one, was certain that the United States was wrong. He did, in fact, call the Mexican War “the most unjust war ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.… an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies.…”1
Grant’s statement was no passing reference. His words of condemnation, in his celebrated Memoirs of 1885, are emphatic. In contrast to much of the text, in which Grant exhibits remarkable serenity, he repeats his disapproval of the Mexican War several times, with heat.
Not everyone agrees with Grant. Indeed, some students of the war have justified the United States’ actions with the same fervor. Professor Justin Smith, for example, who was indisputably the most thorough researcher of the war, wrote in 1919, “… as a matter of fact, the hostilities were deliberately precipitated by the will and act of Mexico.… Mexico wanted [war]; Mexico threatened it; Mexico issued orders to wage it.” Smith concludes that when Mexico refused to “apply pacific measures” to the differences between the two countries, such refusal “rendered just the cause which was before doubtful.”2
But Justin Smith, despite the thoroughness of his research, has not convinced later scholars such as Bernard DeVoto, who considers his judgments “consistently wrongheaded.”3 And without a doubt, the preponderance of American opinion has agreed with Grant that the United States treated Mexico unjustly.
Actually, the issue is not simple, and opinions on it are colored by its role in accelerating the growth of animosity between the Northern and Southern states of the Union which eventually led to the Civil War. The North feared the expansion of slave territory. Thus the facts regarding the conflict that extended the borders of the continental United States from the Rio Grande to the Pacific have been submerged in the slavery issue.
The omission of such events as the Mexican War from the American consciousness does history injustice. Wars as such may best be forgotten, but the period of the Mexican War was an important era, one of upheaval, of passion, of heroism, of bitterness, and of triumph. Respectable men called one another “traitors”; politicians orated; volunteers flocked to the recruiting stations; generals feuded, fumed and grimly disobeyed orders. The cost in American lives was staggering. Of the 104,556 men who served in the army, both regulars and volunteers, 13,768 men died, the highest death rate of any war in our history.4 The period between 1844 and 1848 was a significant time, not something to be relegated to the attic of memory.
Contrary to common understanding, the war with Mexico was supported with enthusiasm by most of the population for at least the first year, by the end of which the necessary armies were recruited and supplied. Volunteers flocked to the colors to rescue “Old Rough and Ready,” Zachary Taylor, from the menace of the Mexicans on the Rio Grande. And as the result of his remarkable series of victories, that same “Zack” Taylor was later elected president, an honor rendered only to victorious generals in popular wars. Boredom and impatience set in among the American population toward the end of the war, but moral disapproval was confined largely to a few New Englanders and some New England settlers in the Midwest.
The fact is that Mexico stood in the way of the American dream of Manifest Destiny. Although that dramatic, pious term was of relatively recent coinage in 1845, the idea of expansion westward to the Pacific had long been in the American mind. As far back as his first inaugural address in 1801, President Thomas Jefferson referred to a vast territory that would provide “room enough for our descendents to the thousandth and ten thousandth generation.” And Jefferson did much to make that dream a reality by purchasing the great Louisiana territory from Emperor Napoleon of France and sending exploratory expeditions to the West, first under Zebulon Pike, later under Lewis and Clark.
In the course of the next four decades other expeditions followed, and Americans became aware of the “Oregon territory,”* occupied jointly by the United States and Britain. They also learned of the lands to the southwest, under the shaky control of Spain until 1821 and thereafter under that of Mexico. Migrations of American settlers to the west were well under way as of 1844, when the annexation of Texas, long an objective of American diplomacy, became an acute issue in the United States.
It is generally assumed that the annexation of Texas to the Union, finally accomplished on July 4, 1845, was the cause of the war between the United States and Mexico in 1846. To the extent that the long border war between Texas and Mexico affected American thinking, it was. But the act of annexation itself was an artificial issue, and even after annexation had been accomplished, war might have been averted. True, Mexico had never recognized the “treaty” of Velasco of 1836, in which Mexican President Santa Anna, a captive of the Texans, had agreed to Texan independence; but from that moment the United States and most European nations recognized Texas as a sovereign nation, though domestically no Mexican politician could ever concede that independence. The Mexican government thus broke relations with the United States in 1845, when Congress offered annexation, but war did not come for another year. By that time Taylor’s army was on the Rio Grande, occupying territory that many Americans, at least privately, considered Mexican.
During the nine years between the Battle of San Jacinto and the U.S. offer of annexation to Texas, the government of the United States always maintained a proper neutrality between Texas and Mexico. The American people, however, observed no such inhibitions. They openly sympathized with the Anglo-Saxon émigrés whom they now considered Texans; they supplied Sam Houston’s army with weapons; and though brutality occurred on both sides, the Americans sided with the Texan version on every controversial issue. As a result the American public grew progressively more antagonistic toward Mexico as a nation. Mexicans came to be considered less than “civilized” people, undeserving of rights generally accorded to Europeans. It is not surprising, therefore, that rationalizing unjust acts against Mexico would become easy.
To the student of today the fate of Mexico is sad, for the Mexicans were victims of both their history and Yankee expansionism. But that sadness need not be exacerbated by excessive shame for the conduct of the United States, because Mexico’s disorganization, corruption, and weakness created a power vacuum that would inevitably have been filled by some predator—if not the United States, then Britain, less likely France, and even, remotely, Russia. American haste to occupy California, for example, was prompted more by fear of British action than by concern of what Mexico would do. After all, the United States and Britain were threatening war over the Oregon territory just north of California. Mexico’s weakness stemmed from nearly three centuries of autocratic Spanish rule and from its own devastating war of independence, not from the actions of the United States.
It may be of some use to the reader to present here a general sequence of events of the Mexican War. As in so many of our wars, the United States entered it woefully unprepared, so much so as to encourage many Mexicans with hopes of easy victory. However, Taylor’s quick victories on the Rio Grande removed the immediate Mexican threat to Texas. The United States, therefore, was given time to mobilize, equip, and train a civilian army. Money and volunteers were provided eagerly by a previously reluctant Congress, prodded by an anxious public, mobilized by the announcement that “American blood has been shed upon American soil.” It then fell to the President to decide how to use them.
It is important to realize that, from the beginning to the end, President Polk always prosecuted the war with a hope of achieving a negotiated peace. To save American lives and to avoid overly injuring Mexican pride, Polk first pursued limited military objectives. In the beginning he hoped that the occupation of the northernmost provinces of Mexico, coupled with a lack of Mexican will, would bring the two countries to the peace table. Accordingly, Polk sent Taylor from the Rio Grande toward Monterrey (in Nuevo León); General John E. Wool, also from Texas, toward Chihuahua; and Colonel Stephen W. Kearny from Missouri to Santa Fe (New Mexico) and then to California. Occupation of those territories, Polk gambled, might be enough.
That plan, however, failed because it underestimated Mexican pride, determination, and hatred of the gringo. As a result, Polk replaced that limited strategy with a major undertaking, an expedition to seize Mexico City by way of an amphibious landing at the Mexican port of Veracruz. Only by taking Mexico City itself, he concluded reluctantly, could military force bring Mexico to its knees.†
The strategy worked, but the road turned out to be fraught with hardship and danger. To occupy Monterrey, Saltillo, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and, later, Mexico City cost dearly, as the statistics show.
The visitor to Mexico—at least, this visitor—is baffled in trying to visualize how Winfield Scott’s small army (only six thousand effectives entered Mexico City in September 1847) could ever have conquered a nation of such vast territory, populated by seven million people. But, of course, Scott’s army did no such thing. When he first occupied Mexico City, Scott was in fact hard put to maintain order even within its very gates. And even when reinforced to 24,000 men in the next few months he was able only to keep his supply line open to the coast and to occupy Mexico City, Veracruz, Tampico, Cuernavaca, Pachuca, and Toluca.5 (The last three were within sixty miles of the capital.)
But Scott firmly controlled the parts of Mexico that mattered, and American politics notwithstanding he could continue to do so indefinitely. Such occupation was unbearable to Mexico. Mexico City was not only the main hub of politics and commerce in the country but the soul of Mexico. And Veracruz was the main port, Mexico’s window to the outside world. And since the United States was willing to pay $15 million for the territories in the north, over which it had already established absolute control, the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 seemed a reasonable price to sensible Mexicans as the only way of getting rid of the Yankee occupation. But by no means had the United States thoroughly “conquered” Mexico.
Looking back, one is tempted to consider the outcome of the Mexican War as a foregone conclusion, to regard the unbroken string of North American victories as easy. It was not so; the success of American arms represented a remarkable feat. Considering the vast distances, the slowness of transport, the paucity of local resources, and the menace of virulent disease, it is remarkable that Taylor and Scott even managed to reach the scenes of their victories, let alone face the guns of the Mexicans.
Today it is difficult to visualize how slow and tedious cross-country movement was during the 1840s. It required about two months for a messenger to carry a dispatch to Washington from Mexico City and bring back a reply. And hauling supplies was done entirely by muscle power; twenty oxen were needed to tow one large artillery piece. Thousands of animals, all needing water and forage, were required to move even a small army overland. And with sanitation not well understood, the worst enemy was disease. Experienced soldiers recognized some relationship between cleanliness and disease—witness the lower death rate among the disciplined regulars in contrast to that of the casual volunteers. But the exact causes—water pollution, insects, etc.—were not identified. The base troops stationed at Veracruz, therefore, were actually at greater risk over a period of time than were the soldiers in the front ranks of battle.
Logistical factors, then, restricted the amount of force that the United States could deliver to any given point inland. With the size of the armies so limited, American troops were outnumbered in every inland battle fought. Taylor’s and Scott’s men were much better organized, disciplined, and motivated than their Mexican counterparts; but in some instances, as at Buena Vista, Mexican numerical superiority was so great that decimation of the American force would have been inevitable save for one factor: superior weaponry and the ability to use it.
It is no downgrading of the infantry’s claim to be the “queen of battles” for us to recognize that the field artillery made the difference between victory and defeat for the Americans. The Mexican and American infantry were equipped with about the same flintlock and percussion muskets that fired buckshot and ball, which were so ineffective at long ranges that, as Grant put it, “a man might fire at you all day without your finding it out.”6 The artillery arm, however, was a different story. The American artillery had the advantage of a greater range than the Mexican and of much deadlier projectiles. Unlike the Mexican artillery, which fired only solid shot, the American arsenal included both canister and grape.‡ Of the two, the grape was more flexible because the amount of shot could be varied, but both were deadly. And American artillerists had developed to an advanced state the techniques of quick unlimbering and firing. In the artillery arm, at least, the American army was the peer of any army in the world.
Though every aspect of the Mexican War is interesting, the most fascinating is its cast of characters—the collection of colorful, egotistical, and daring personalities. The 1840s was the age of the individual, in which faceless bureaucrats did not exist. Thus the armies of both nations were both noteworthy for internecine conflicts, far more so than for any lofty unity of purpose. Commanders on both sides disobeyed orders, justifying their acts of insubordination on the basis of “changed situations.” The distances from headquarters, of course, accounted to some extent for a local commander’s inability to follow instructions to the letter, but that consideration seems often to have excused rather than actually necessitated freedom of action on the spot.
Thus Zachary Taylor justified taking a precarious position at Buena Vista on the basis that Scott and others, who ordered him to pull back to Monterrey, were too far away to appreciate the situation. Robert F. Stockton, in California, argued that a changed situation justified his ignoring presidential orders designating Stephen W. Kearny as governor. Sometimes, especially on the Mexican side, no excuse for insubordination was offered at all. Valencia’s defiance of Santa Anna’s repeated orders to pull back from Contreras, for example, could offer no such excuse. (Valencia’s life expectancy was therefore dependent upon his staying away from Santa Anna for some time after his defeat.) Slavish subservience to authority was not characteristic of the period.
Because of language, distance, and, above all, the paucity of Mexican writing on the Mexican War, this story is told largely from the North American viewpoint. Accordingly, the most vivid characters that emerge are Yankees. Of the Mexicans—Santa Anna, Arista, Ampudia, and Gómez Farías—only Santa Anna, that flawed yet nearly indispensable Mexican leader, stands out. Ambitious, energetic, intelligent, and unprincipled, Santa Anna so dominated Mexican political and military affairs from 1829 to the Mexican War (and later) that other figures seem significant only insofar as they affect the fortunes of Santa Anna himself. Only the idealistic and liberal Valentín Gómez Farías, twice Santa Anna’s vice president, appears as a force in his own right. And unfortunately for Mexico, Gómez Farías’s domestic political objectives were inconsistent with Mexico’s military interests.
Among the Americans the “big three” are, of course, President James K. Polk, General Winfield Scott and General Zachary Taylor. They came together from different directions. Just before 1844, when this story begins, Polk was out of political office, practicing law and politics in Columbia, Tennessee. Scott, as general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, alternated his time between Washington and West Point, where he periodically moved his headquarters at will. Taylor was a soldier-planter, who managed to combine his military duties with farming along the Mississippi frontier, thanks to the generous cooperation of an understanding army. Others of prominence—Senator Thomas Hart Benton, General Stephen W. Kearny, Commodore Robert F. Stockton, Commodore David E. Conner, and Generals William J. Worth, David E. Twiggs, and Gideon J. Pillow—were pursuing separate careers. When the war came, each contributed in an individual, usually individualistic, manner.
On the purely military side, students of the Mexican War have enjoyed making relative evaluations of Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor. Comparisons between these two men are actually idle, as each had a different set of circumstances facing him.
Of the two, Taylor was by all odds the popular favorite of soldiers and public alike. Rough-hewn, folksy, direct, at the outset self-effacing, Taylor earned the respect and often the adulation of his military subordinates. Professionals such as U.S. Grant and George G. Meade admired him; Oliver O. Howard, later of Gettysburg fame, nearly worshiped him. The political electorate was allowed to see him only at his best. Military officers usually consider him nearly ideal for the job he did, his courage far outweighing the growing insubordination he later developed toward his political masters. Political historians, perhaps influenced by his later career as president, tend to downgrade him. This author admires him.
By contrast, the military competence of Winfield Scott strikes any student of this war as impressive. Not only did Scott visualize the Veracruz expedition—many did that—but he made it work. He calculated the strengths necessary, planned the logistics, approved details such as the designs of the surfboats, coordinated operations with the navy, fought one siege and five bitter battles, and occupied Mexico City within seven months after landing at Veracruz.
The obstacles overcome by Scott were formidable. His highest-ranking subordinate officers were, by fiat of a politically minded president, retreaded volunteers rather than regulars. His army was short of heavy artillery and land transportation. And his progress was halted at Jalapa, a few miles inland, when the enlistments of nearly all his volunteers expired. To cope with his inability to supply his army from Veracruz, Scott felt himself forced to cut off from his base of supply. Without wasting time by awaiting action from Washington, he boldly pushed on and despite some tactical mistakes took Mexico City by relying on the resources of the land. Fascinated military critics, the Duke of Wellington among them, had originally forecast disaster for Scott’s campaign into Mexico, but later they heaped upon him lavish praise.
And yet Winfield Scott, who may well have been the most capable soldier this country has ever produced, has never received the credit that was his due. In a way the fame he deserved shared the fate of the war he fought, which was soon cast into the shadows. But his personality also contributed to his historical eclipse. His overbearing manner earned him enemies in important places. His ego often made him appear ridiculous to the press and the public; his talking down to his superiors made him insufferable. Foremost among such superiors was President Polk, who never tired of seeking ways to debase him.
Unfortunately, Scott’s personality also divided his army, a flaw that marred the greatness of his campaign. Shortly after the occupation of Mexico City, three of Scott’s principal officers were arrested for their unwarranted efforts to degrade him. It is difficult to visualize such personal disloyalty developing among the officers of Zachary Taylor.
So the two generals—Taylor and Scott—played different roles. Probably neither could have done so well in the role of the other.
President James Polk’s reputation among historians and the public alike remained low for decades after he left office, partly because of his unappealing personality but also because of the prejudices of Northern historians, who associated him with the promotion of slavery. Those with a military background are often offended by the contempt that Polk showed for the military in general and for Scott in particular. And Polk’s secrecy often gave cause for bitter resentment—especially the questionable way that he managed to present Congress with a “war in being.” That incident, in which Polk deprived the Congress of any options regarding war or peace, frustrated many Whigs, whose party produced most of the historians for the next few decades. It also gave rise to the nickname “Polk the Mendacious.”
In modern times, however, the growing enchantment with “strong,” manipulative presidents has raised Polk’s position in the eyes of some historians. Such fashions change, but whatever Polk’s fate at the hands of the pundits, anyone must admire his resolve. Despite his guile and his consuming obsession with partisan politics, he was effective as an executive. Manifest Destiny was not Polk’s invention, but he was its ideal agent.
The general relationship between Mexico and the United States is beyond the scope of this book. However, the effect of the Mexican War on that relationship has been my preoccupation in writing it. I hope that this effort will assist in an evaluation of the Mexican War as a significant event of history.
* Which included what are now the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho as well as small portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Canada.
† The military buff will notice a superficial resemblance between this evolution of strategy and that followed in Europe during World War II. The northern provinces of Mexico would correspond to North Africa; Veracruz would correspond to Normandy.
‡ A canister was a tin cylinder fused with a powder charge and small shot. Grape consisted of a cluster of balls between two wooden blocks called “sabots.” (Lester R. Dillon, American Artillery in the Mexican War, p. 14.)