Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
This information caused Taylor to retreat back to the pass at Angostura, near a
hacienda
called Buena Vista. Here he had a position that could not be flanked or turned. He took McCulloch's personal report, and said only, "Very well, Major, that's all I wanted to know. I am glad they did not catch you."
Santa Anna mistook this retreat, and pressed onward rashly, expecting to overtake a demoralized army. Thus he ran into the American rifles, artillery, and massed bayonets at Buena Vista, and suffered what was for Mexico a disastrous defeat. This man, who personally did so much to destroy his own nation, was forced to lead a broken rabble back across the desert. He had not only failed to win a victory for morale purposes in an unimportant theater, but he had dissipated the force that might have stopped Winfield Scott before Mexico. He had also awarded Zachary Taylor the U.S. Presidency, as a result of the great victory at Buena Vista.
Again, McCulloch and his men went home. Taylor, in writing, demanded that he be sent no more Rangers. He gave the reason: "The mounted men from Texas have scarcely made one expedition without unwarrantably killing a Mexican."
This, in many American minds, overrode their services to the cause.
General Winfield Scott, whose main thrust was designed to win the war, landed at Vera Cruz in March 1847, and immediately advanced toward the Mexican capital. Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, Molina del Rey, and Chapultepec rolled down on the Mexicans, a series of disasters. Scott went into the City of Mexico on September 14. In this campaign he did not use, nor apparently did he need, cavalry. The terrain was eminently suitable for foot soldiers, and for maps and route evaluation Scott relied on his West Pointer engineers.
No Texas Rangers arrived until Scott was almost at Mexico City.
In the capital, however, the American army was in an unenviable position. It had arrived intact because, after Santa Anna's fiasco at Buena Vista, there was no formidable Mexican army in the field. But Scott's route of communications to the coast was long and vulnerable. It lay across a succession of thickets and forests near the Gulf, rising through a series of narrow defiles, gorges, and passes on the upper plateaus. This was beautiful country, which had inspired every arriving conqueror with a certain amount of awe. It was also infested with a new Hispanic opposition to Nordic might—the
guerrilla
(literally, "little war").
Behind Scott, the Mexican population was aroused:
rancheros
and
hacendados
took irregular forces into the woods and hills. They began to bleed Scott's supply line. In April 1847, Robelledo captured ten American wagons. McIntosh, marching to reinforce Scott, lost one quarter of his wagons and many men. Pierce suffered a hundred dead out of a thousand on the passage, without fighting a battle. Wells, coming up with two-hundred odd, lost forty to guerrillas. The situation rapidly turned serious.
The efforts of both American regulars and militia volunteers against these guerrillas was almost ludicrous. The records, and one soldier's diary reveal each punitive expedition merely lost more men: ". . . fell in with some rancheros or guerrillas . . . several of our men killed. On Friday the Illinois company went out after carne [meat] and guerrillas; they came back without dead guerrillas but with two dead soldiers . . . more . . . went out to avenge the death of their companions. Later in the afternoon they returned. Two of their men had been lassoed, dragged on the ground at full speed, and speared to death."
All records agree that only one American officer seemed to know what to do in this deteriorating situation. J. J. Oswandel, in his
Notes on the Mexican War
, wrote in an entry dated May 25, 1847: "This morning Gen. Twiggs' division and a large train . . . arrived in Perote city. Among them I noticed . . . Capt. Samuel H. Walker, the Texas Ranger, with two companies of mounted riflemen, mounted on fine spirited horses. They are all fine, strong, healthy, and good looking men, nearly every one measured over six feet. . . . I learn they are to remain with us to keep the National Road open between this castle and the city of Jalapa. So guerrillas, robadors, take warning . . . for the renowned Capt. Samuel H. Walker takes no prisoners."
The "renowned Capt. Samuel H. Walker" now held a commission as captain in the regular army, Polk's reward for his singular services on the Palo Alto. But neither his contemporaries nor Sam Walker ever made much of this. Walker was always called "the Texas Ranger," and few have bothered to set the record straight. Walker acted, thought, and fought like a Westerner, never a captain of United States dragoons.
Walker's troop was stationed at Perote through the summer. This great, grim fortress remained a bitter memory to him, and to all the Texans who had been incarcerated there with him in 1843. Walker had buried a dime within the prison walls as a symbolic hope of his return; now he went and dug it up. Then, he looked at the Stars and Stripes floating over Perote, and took to killing guerrillas. The records show that again and again Walker rode back into Perote from a scout with captured arms, horses, wagons, and other sundry loot. He never reported any live guerrillas. When he rode out of the fortress on one occasion, an American there wrote, "Should Capt. Walker come across the guerrillas God help them. . . ."
Walker ranged wide; while the Mexicans harassed the roads he popped through the brush and harassed them, from the rear. He pressed after them into the villages where they assembled before and after raids. He broke them at Las Vegas and La Hoya, and chased them as mercilessly as his limited forces could. He fought guerrillas the only way they could be fought, by making the country entirely dangerous for them. In no other way could it be made safe for Americans.
While Scott took the capital, things became even more serious on his flank. Childs, who held Puebla with about 2,000 men, was under virtual siege by Santa Anna and a guerrilla army. When Santa Anna's forces grew to some 5,000, General Joseph Lane was ordered to march to Puebla to his relief. With Joe Lane came a regiment of Texans, commanded by Colonel Jack Hays.
Behind Hays's reappearance in Mexico lay a story that reached all the way to Washington. When the acute problem of guerrilla warfare along Scott's line of communications became known in the capital, Polk, as the President's diary for July 17, 1847, makes clear, insisted that the job of guarding the road be given to Jack Hays. The President's wishes carried over the protests of the Army, and thus another thousand mounted Texans arrived via ship at Vera Cruz. Here, before they set out for the interior, another significant event occurred. Samuel Colt's 1,000 new "Army" model revolvers arrived, and were distributed joyfully by Captain John S. Ford and others among the troops.
This regiment was composed of real Rangers, not a conglomerate force of Americans such as Walker was commanding and training. On the road toward Mexico, this column excited great wonder. Hays's men wore every kind of coat—blue, black, long-tailed, and short. They wore leather caps, stained fedoras, and soiled panama hats. Most were bearded. They rode every color of horse. The most excitement was caused by their armament. Each man carried a rifle, a knife, and a rope; some had single-shot horse pistols—but all had two Colt six-shooters prominently displayed in his belt.
Hays himself aroused much interest, because he was so unlike his men. The officers of Lane's Brigade, to which he was joined, could hardly believe this was the "world-renowned" Jack Hays. "I shook hands with him," one wrote. "Jack was very modest . . . plainly dressed, and wore a blue roundabout, black leather cap, and black pants, and had nothing about him to denote . . . the army or . . . military rank. His face was sun-browned; his cheeks gaunt; and his dark hair and dark eyes gave a shade of melancholy to his features . . .made him appear more like a boy than a man."
On October 4, 1847, Lane's Brigade reached Perote, held by Walker. Hays and his old lieutenant, now with different commands, in different services, took the field, screening the brigade's advance to Puebla. Walker took the vanguard, directly ahead of the infantry. He was described by an American who saw him ride past as "rather short, slender, spare, slouchy . . . with reddish hair, small reddish beard, mild blue eyes and a quiet kindly manner."
Walker rode into Santa Anna's army at Huamantla, on October 9. The ex-Ranger yelled the charge to his U.S. dragoon command the instant contact was made. Walker's men spilled into Huamantla, shooting and sabering. He was carrying the day, when Santa Anna came up with his full force. In heavy fighting, the dragoons were pushed back, until Lane's columns could arrive. When they did, they swept the town and captured all the Mexican guns, but not before Sam Walker was shot dead. Walker's men broke into tears over his body. General Lane gave him the highest praise: "Foremost in the advance, he had routed the enemy when he fell mortally wounded."
Hays's Rangers took Walker's place. Lane and Hays moved to Puebla, and broke the siege. Then, Hays cut a swath of destruction north to Matamoros in November, considerably lessening the taste of the rancheros for partisan work. The Mexicans could hardly mount effective guerrilla war, when a band of ravening Texans were waging guerrilla warfare in their own rear.
Hays rode back to Mexico City to join Scott. He brought in some prisoners. "This," Oswandel marveled, "is one of the seven wonders." Oswandel did not understand the cruelties and necessities of true partisan war.
Captain Ford, who was now universally called "Old Rip," described the entry of the Rangers into the Mexican capital: "Our entrance . . . produced a sensation . . . They thronged the streets along which we passed. The greatest curiosity prevailed to get a sight at "Los Diabolos Tejanos"—the Texas Devils."
To this generation of Mexicans the
diablos
tejanos
(Ford's Spanish was border Tex-Mex, and not the best) were still a shuddery legend. The Alamo, San Jacinto, and a dozen skirmishes since were not looked upon in Mexico as valiant stands as they were in the United States.
Los Tejanos sangrientes
—"the bloody Texans"—Mexicans said, and women crossed themselves at the name.
Ford's diary recorded the Rangers' propensity for an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, with appalling clarity. Already, the first shock of defeat was passing in the capital, and resistance was smoldering in the alleys and back streets. American stragglers and the visitors to brothels were being knifed. The American command took the line that this was the victims' own fault for exposing themselves so. The Rangers immediately showed a different reaction.
When a pickpocket stole a Ranger kerchief and was detected, a bullet knocked the hapless thief kicking to the pavement. The owner calmly picked up his property and went on, not bothering to look at his victim. Another Mexican made the error of hurling a stone at passing Texans. Another shot, another Mexican dead. When Rangers entered the National Theater restaurant, one waiter dropped his trays with a crash and fled. He was not going to risk offending a
diablo sangriente
.
Then, some inhabitants of Mexico made the monumental mistake of murdering a Ranger named Adam Allsens in one of the less reputable quarters of the city. Roberts's Company rode into the quarter. Nothing of that night was ever described, but reports from the next morning exist: "At breakfast time they had brought in fifty-three corpses. . . . In the evening the captain reported more than eighty bodies lying in the morgue. . . . They had been shot in the streets and left lying."
General Scott called in Colonel Hays and protested. Hays said mildly that no one could "impose" on the Rangers. The quiet-eyed, slender Hays faced the General down; "Old Fuss and Feathers," as the Texans called Scott, dropped the matter. He did find employment for the Ranger regiment outside the capital as soon as possible, however.
After this incident, no Rangers, and few Americans, were killed on occupation duty in the City of Mexico. The Ranger captains' methods were brutal, but not without their rationale.
Rinche
(Ranger) was passing into the Mexican tongue as a term of dread. But the Rangers had established a lasting moral superiority in combat; they were almost always outnumbered, but their greatest asset was the fact that their enemies were almost always afraid of them. This growing reputation was worth almost as much as the Colt pistol to the Ranger force. It put enormous pressures on Ranger opponents—Mexican, Indian, or white.
Jack Hays could keep the regiment in check when he felt it necessary.
When Santa Anna passed through the Ranger lines, on Scott's safe-conduct, in the last stages of the war, there was violent sentiment in the Ranger ranks to seize him. Santa Anna's invasion of Texas had left lasting scars and hatreds. Hays stopped this talk, not by bluster or threats or reference to discipline but simply by saying that any such move by the Rangers would dishonor Texas. The Mexican general was noticeably pale when his carriage passed through the Texas regiment, but he passed safely.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war between Mexico and the United States in 1848, but it did not entirely end hostilities between Mexico and the State of Texas, as many Americans never fully understood. There was to be more bloodshed along the border river for almost a hundred years.
The exploits of the Rangers brought worldwide publicity to the force, and to the State of Texas itself. The reports of newspaper correspondents and the letters and diaries of American veterans were filled with admiring references to the Texans. Both Hays's men, and their heavy revolvers, impressed themselves indelibly on the American imagination. By 1848, "Texas Ranger" and "Colt revolver" were household American terms.