Soldiers of Conquest

GRANT AND LEE COMRADES IN ARMS IN THE MEXICAN WAR, 1846–1848

By
F. M. Parker

1846–1848.

President Polk, desiring to expand the United States to the Pacific Ocean, orders General Zachary Taylor with his army to the Rio Grande on the Mexican border to provoke the Mexicans into starting a war. At that time Mexican controlled California blocked America's access to the sea. Among General Taylor's men is Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant. The Mexicans attack the Americans. General Taylor immediately invades Mexico and defeats the Mexican Army in three hard fought battles. When the Mexicans refuse to come to terms, President Polk orders General Winfield Scott to invade Mexico at Veracruz and march his army inland and capture Mexico City, the nation's capitol.

Hurried south by a swift wind in their sails, the 100 ships crowded with General Scott's 9,000 warriors and the holds crammed with cannons, muskets and cavalry mounts, arrives off the Mexican coast at Veracruz. Among the soldiers are Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant and Captain Robert E. Lee.

Grant is 24 years old, a smallish fellow from the backwaters of frontier Ohio. He is a hardened combat veteran from fighting with General Taylor in the fierce battles in northern Mexico. He is a second lieutenant commanding the quartermaster corps of a brigade. Lee is 40 years old, stands six feet tall, and is from the famous Lee family of Virginia. He is untested in battle. He is a captain of engineers and an aid to General Scott. The general has selected Lee as an aid due to his perfect score at West Point, and to the Lee family name made famous by illustrious ancestors.

Though different in many respects, the two men have characteristics in common. Both are West Point graduates, both desire glory and increase in grade, and both know that it is during war that those things can be won if a man acts bravely.

General Scott lands his army upon the hostile Mexican shore. After a heavy bombardment of Veracruz, the Americans capture the walled city. Scott waits for the reinforcements and supplies that President Polk has promised. He waits in vain. When his men begin to die from yellow fever, he severs his link with the States and his supply base at Veracruz and marches his small army into the mountains. He must capture Mexico City lying in the center of the nation of seven million inhabitants. He will lead his men to victory or death. Santa Anna is waiting with an army 30,000 strong to annihilate the small force of invading Americans.

A company of Texas Rangers arrive and join Scott in his drive toward Mexico City. These revenge seeking fighters are intent on capturing Santa Anna and killing him for the massacre of fellow Texans at The Alamo and Goliad.

The Americans win a hard fought battle at Cerro Gordo. Then with the assistance of the Catholic Church, Puebla, the second largest city in Mexico, is captured without a fight. Fierce fighting occurs at El Molino Del Rey, Chapultepec, Contreras, and Churubusco. Lastly comes the final great battle for Mexico City where Lee and Grant perform valiant deeds. Lee is wounded. For their brave actions, Lee is promoted to colonel and Grant to captain.

By defeating the Mexican Army, the Americans force the Mexican government to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that relinquished one half of Mexico's land area to the United States. That land increased the size of the U. S. by a quarter and now makes up the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Colorado, and Kansas. Further the war guaranteed the desire of Texas, which had fought free of Mexico ten years before, to be part of the US.

Author's Note.
The Mexican War was the training ground for most of the Union and Confederate officers in the deadly American Civil War. More than 100 of the generals learned their skill at warfare under the renowned warrior General Winfield Scott. Some of the more notable generals beside Grant and Lee were Jefferson Davis, George McClellan, William Sherman, Thomas Jackson, and George Meade.

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The Mexican War of 1846-1848 could well be called the Forgotten War. Few Americans can recall ever hearing of it, and yet it was a war of invasion and conquest in which the United States took from Mexico the land area now encompassing the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado, Kansas, and Wyoming. This huge land area plus Texas makes up one-quarter of the lower forty-eight.

The U. S. annexation of Texas in 1845 set the stage for the war. Mexico in early 1830 had granted permission for people from the U. S. to come into Texas and take up land and make a home among the few Mexican citizens living there. By 1836 the number of Americans living in Texas had grown to several thousands and they felt the need to be independent of Mexico. The revolting Texans were beaten and massacred at the Alamo and Goliad. A few weeks later Sam Houston with an army of 783 men defeated the Mexican Army of two thousand at San Jacinto and declared Texas an independent and sovereign nation. Mexico did not accept this, but considered Texas still part of that nation and a wayward province in revolt. When the United States annexed Texas as a state, the Mexican government declared the annexation an act of war. Further complicating the situation, Mexico claimed the Nueces River was the western boundary of Texas while the Texans claimed the boundary was the Rio Grande some one hundred miles farther west and south.

President Polk, and indeed most of the people of the U. S. believed in Manifest Destiny, the American people's right to control all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. To reach this end, Polk sent a representative to Mexico City with an offer to pay Mexico thirty-five million dollars for California, and New Mexico and to give up its claims on Texas. Mexican officials refused to listen to the offer, and their congress quickly passed a resolution that even to speak with an American official about the subject was treasonous and punishable by death.

To defend the Texan claim of the Rio Grande as the western boundary of Texas, President Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor with three thousand men to the disputed Rio Grande. Instructed not to start hostilities, Taylor built a fort above the river and settled down to wait for the Mexicans to begin the fighting.

At this same time, the British and the Americans seemed to be girding for a war over the boundary of the Oregon Territory. The American's slogan was “54-40 or fight”, meaning the border would be 54 degrees and 40 minutes north latitude, which would put it at the southern border of Russian Alaska, while the British wanted it much farther south. The British would not allow a large slice of Canada to be taken. A war seemed imminent.

The British were also vehemently against the Americans move against Mexico for they had many valuable investments there. After the Mexicans drove out the Spanish, British businessmen had poured into the country to develop gold and silver mines and establish trading companies and mercantile businesses.

Britain was not alone in considering the United States an upstart nation driven to expand its borders, so too did France and Spain. Polk was aware of a meeting held by the three countries in early 1846 wherein they had discussed a scheme to install a monarchy in Mexico, one ruled by a Spanish Prince with his reign enforced by the armies of the three European nations. Polk, to forestall the plan and also to prevent any military assistance from foreign powers reaching Mexico, ordered Admiral David Conner, Commodore of the American fleet of warships and blockade the eastern coast of Mexico. With a foreign army on its territory and a navy blockading its seaports, Mexico was now in a position to either sell a large piece of their country to Polk, or go to war with the U. S.

The Mexicans believed they would have a strong ally in the British, and were encouraged in this belief by editorials in British newspapers. With this in their thoughts, and seeing the controversy in the U. S. about the war, the Mexicans declared war on the U. S. The Mexican Army crossed the Rio Grande and attacked a company of Americans, killing several men. In retaliation, General Taylor crossed to the south bank of the river, and on May 8, 1846 defeated the Mexican Army at Palo Alto. A second battle at Resaca de la Palma was fought on May 9 and again the Americans were victorious. Taylor kept marching deeper into Mexico and in four days of savage fighting, September 20-24, captured Monterrey. Here he settled down to wait for the Mexicans to call for negotiations to resolve the disputes.

And wait he did, as did President Polk in Washington. However, regardless of the defeat of its northern army, the Mexicans refused to negotiate with the Americans. Worried about the anti-war uproar increasing across the United States, Polk ordered Winfield Scott, General and Chief of the American Army, to assemble an army and invade Mexico at Veracruz and march inland and capture Mexico City, Mexico's capital and seat of government. He thought that must surely force the stubborn Mexicans to come to the negotiation table. With Polk's promise of a 25,000 man army, Scott assembled his first contingent, two divisions of battle hardened regulars from Taylor's army in the north and a new division of volunteers. On March 2, 1847, Scott set sail for Veracruz with 9,000 men on 100 ships.

Among the soldiers journeying south with Scott were the battle toughened Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant, who had fought with General Taylor in all the battles in northern Mexico, and the untested Captain Robert E. Lee.

*

Robert Edward Lee was born on January 19, 1807 in the grand manor house Stratford Hall in Westmorland County, Virginia, the birthplace of many famous members of the illustrious Lee family. The East India Company, aided by an ample donation from Queen Caroline of England, had built the seventeen room Stratford Hall for Thomas Lee in 1730. Its paneled walls were hung with portraits of many earlier Lees. The oldest portrait was of Lancelot Lee who entered England with William the Conqueror in 1066. Lancelot distinguished himself at the battle of Hastings and acquired a large estate in Essex County.

A later member of the family, Lionel Lee at the head of a company of cavaliers, took part in the Third Crusade, following Richard Coeur de Lion in 1192 to Palestine. He displayed great gallantry at the siege of Acre and in return for his services was made Earl of Litchfield. Robert could trace his line of descent from Richard Lee, a younger son of the Earl of Litchfield and Knight of the Garter in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Richard Lee, in 1641, came to American as colonial secretary for Governor Sir William Berkeley, and this began the American line of Lees.

Three generations later, Robert's father Henry Lee was born in Stratford Hall. He was nineteen when the colonies revolted against England. He fought with General Washington and rose rapidly up through the officer ranks. Due to his daring actions, he became known as “Light-horse Harry”. After the war he served in the Continental Congress and three times as governor of Virginia.