Читать книгу Last in Their Class - James Robbins - Страница 15

ZEB INGE

ON MAY 9, 1846, Captain Ephraim Kirby Smith awoke on the field of Palo Alto, Texas, among the men of his company of the Fifth Infantry regiment. Kirby had returned to the Army several years after his court martial for flogging troops after the Fort Mackinac mutiny sixteen years earlier. He spent another decade and a half on the frontier, in Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, still frustrated at the path his military career was taking. He was not called to fight in his family’s home territory of Florida and did not volunteer to go either. Yet on this morning, in this dry, beaten field, two months shy of twenty years since he left West Point, Kirby had reason to be proud. The previous day, outnumbered American forces under the command of Brigadier General Zachary Taylor, moving to lift the siege of Fort Brown on the Rio Grande, fought Mexican troops under General Mariano Arista to a standstill, in the first major engagement in the as yet undeclared war with Mexico. It was Kirby’s first taste of battle.¹

Palo Alto was in the main an artillery duel. The infantry spent the day in line or square, watching the distant movements of the Mexicans in their resplendent uniforms, warding off cavalry attacks and protecting the artillerymen as they delivered their deadly fire. It was also an eventful day for Major Samuel Ringgold, fifth in Thayer’s first class of 1818, a pioneer in the development of light artillery tactics.² The American guns were smaller, but more mobile and swiftly reloaded. Ringgold had developed methods of fire and maneuver that made his light cannon more lethal than the heavier, more ponderous Mexican pieces. Red-flannel-shirted gunners moved their guns, unlimbered, loaded, fired a few rounds, then limbered to move to new positions before the enemy batteries could bring them under counterfire. Before Palo Alto, this had been only a concept, but there it was tested in warfare and proved its worth under Ringgold’s deft and daring leadership. He was assisted by his junior officer, Lieutenant Randolph Ridgely, the determined Immortal of the Class of 1837 who suffered through three plebe years. Throughout the battle, cannonballs fell amidst infantry drawn up in close order, ricocheting into packed bodies of men, or skipping harmlessly past them into the tall dry grass. “The enemy’s shot were playing briskly through our ranks,” Kirby wrote, “the wounded and dying at our feet producing no effect upon the admirable discipline of the men.”³

After an hour of dueling, a smoldering wad from one of the American guns landed in some scrub and the wind-whipped prairie caught fire. The spreading flames and heavy smoke forced a pause in the fight, and each side sought to maneuver to advantage under cover. After the fire moved on, the battle reignited, raging through the afternoon and into evening. When a large force of Mexican cavalry threatened on the right flank, Taylor dispatched the Fifth Infantry to intercept them. Kirby’s company rushed across a quarter mile of prairie to meet the advancing dragoons. “Here they come!” someone shouted, and the infantrymen formed a square, standing shoulder to shoulder in multiple lines, muskets poised, bayonets bristling. The mass of cavalry, eight hundred strong, rode towards them at a gallop, then at a charge. At one hundred feet out, the Mexicans fired their side arms, drew sabers and kept coming. Some Americans fell, but the rest stood coolly, and a moment later returned a devastating volley. Off to the right, twenty mounted Texas Rangers under Captain Samuel H. Walker picked off Mexican officers with deadly-accurate rifle fire. The horsemen veered left, and were met by raking canister fire from two of Ridgely’s field pieces, sending the cavalry back to their lines in a rout. It was Kirby’s baptism of fire. “The spectacle was magnificent,” he wrote. “The prairie was burning brilliantly between the two armies and some twenty pieces of artillery thundering from right to left, while through the lurid scene was heard the tramping of horses and the wild cheering of the men.”⁴

Combat ended when darkness fell. The Mexicans got the worst of it, but many Americans fell as casualties too, among them Ringgold himself—hit in the side of the leg by a Mexican cannonball that passed through his horse and blasted out through his other thigh. He was taken from the battlefield, surprisingly calm. Ringgold lived for sixty hours, cheerful to the end. Back on the field, soldiers worked by the orange light of the retreating prairie fire, treating wounded and burying the dead. The infantry made bivouac in their squares, sleeping on the ground, on their muskets, mindful of the enemy still on the field. It was a clear, cool night, the moon gently lighting the battlefield behind wisps of smoke. The air was tainted with the smell of burned grass and gunpowder. From both sides came the sounds of the wounded, the dying, or those suffering under the surgeon’s saw.

When morning broke the next day, the Mexicans had departed, slipping from the field unnoticed and withdrawing down the road towards the Rio Grande and their headquarters at Matamoros. After a quick breakfast, Taylor called his senior commanders together for a council of war. Ringgold was not present—he was in the hospital tent at the moment, showing signs of improvement, attended by his friend Ridgely, who had assumed command of the battery. Ridgely said he hoped “old Zack will go ahead, and bring the matter to close quarters.” But few other officers agreed. The Mexicans had removed to a stronger defensive position, closer to their base of supply and reinforcements, and to the besieged Fort Brown. The Americans were still outnumbered and would have to leave their pack train behind, along with a force to protect the supplies and the wounded. The odds did not look good. Nine of Taylor’s commanders advised either entrenching to await additional troops, or withdrawing to the supply head at Port Isabel. Only four voted in favor of renewing the battle. Taylor listened pensively to the arguments and concluded the council by saying, “I will be at Ft. Brown before tonight, if I live.”

Manifest Destiny

IN 1844, THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS was a sovereign state, recognized by the United States, Britain and France, but not by the country from which it won independence, Mexico. The Tyler administration had sought to annex Texas and negotiated a treaty to that effect. To deter Mexico from seeking to reconquer its wayward northern province, Tyler sent a secret “Corps of Observation” to the border, commanded by brevet Brigadier General Zachary Taylor, hero of Okeechobee. But when the annexation treaty went before the Senate in June, Tyler suffered a setback. Sectional issues, particularly the understanding that Texas would be admitted as a slave state, coupled with divisions within the Whig party, led to a 35 to 16 defeat.

The slaveholding states, greatly outrepresented in the House, sought to maintain parity in the Senate in order to block any legislative efforts to end their “peculiar institution.” Florida was on the verge of statehood, and the accession of Texas and lands to the west would supply territory out of which could be carved future slave states, to prevent a free state lock on government. The issue was thrown into the cauldron of the 1844 presidential race. James K. Polk, a protégé of Andrew Jackson’s, known as “Young Hickory,” ran on an annexationist platform, seeking to balance sectional feelings by also making an issue of the Oregon boundary dispute with Britain, coining the expression “54’40” or Fight!” Whig candidate Henry Clay, who opposed annexation, tried to straddle the issue, but wound up alienating his abolitionist base and lost the election.

Annexation was voted on again in a controversial joint resolution that President Tyler signed March 1, 1845, three days before leaving office. The offer was taken to Texas by the chargé d’affaires, Andrew Jackson Donelson, nephew of the former president and second-ranked graduate of the USMA Class of 1820, whom Thayer had attempted to expel.⁵ A July 4 popular convention in Austin approved the offer, and Texas was formally admitted to statehood on December 22, 1845.

The resolution admitting Texas left an important omission: it did not define the southern border of the new state. Texas claimed all lands south to the Rio Grande, and Mexico claimed the area north to the Nueces, a matter of thousands of acres of sparsely inhabited, lawless territory, where the bleached skulls of victims of the incessant violence decorated the roadside bushes and mesquite trees. Polk sought to reach a diplomatic solution, as he would with Britain over the boundary in Oregon.⁶ There was also interest in the Mexican lands of California, which some felt had too much potential to stay under weak Mexican stewardship. It was thought that if the United States did not annex the area, Britain might. The American negotiators offered fifty million dollars and a renunciation of Mexican debts to the United States for all the lands from Texas to the Pacific. But the deal was rejected. The loss of Texas had been a blow to Mexican honor, and the domestic political climate in that country had swung decidedly in favor of war.

In July 1845, Taylor moved his Corps of Observation south to Corpus Christi on the Nueces, renaming it the Army of Occupation. This same month, the eastern newspaper Democratic Review first used the term “Manifest Destiny” as a rationale for annexation of Texas. Corpus Christi was a wild frontier town, lawless, anarchic and rife with disease. But for the officers encamped there, it became a grand reunion. Taylor’s force numbered over four thousand, around half the total Army strength. It grew to be the largest body of regulars assembled since the Revolution. It was a gathering of decades of West Point classmates and friends, in many cases together again for the first time since graduation. Kirby wrote “[I] was greeted frequently, as I passed the camp, by cordial welcomes from the well-known voices of old companions I had not met for years.”⁷ This brotherhood of arms, young men mostly in their twenties and thirties, included some fresh from West Point, others coming from service in Florida, and still others, like Kirby, from the frontier. The roster of the scores of officers at Corpus Christi stands as a roll call of future greats in a not too distant war that was then thought inconceivable—Grant, Meade, Pemberton, Bragg, Reynolds and Longstreet among them.

At the Academy, rumors of imminent war were rife, and it was said that the Class of 1846 would graduate early and be sent to Texas; but at Corpus Christi, the waiting continued. Second Lieutenant George Gordon Meade (USMA 1835), a topographical engineer sent to help determine the location of the true border, wrote his wife, “There are a thousand reports in the camp, making the period of our remaining almost any length from one month to a year; but I presume the truth is nothing is known about it, even at Washington.”⁸ The delicate negotiations were disrupted in December when the moderate Mexican president Joaquin Herrera was overthrown in a coup by Major General Mariano Paredes, who renewed Mexico’s claim of Texas to the Louisiana border. There followed five months of increasing tensions, as politicians on both sides sought to use the issue to their advantage, and diplomatic initiatives floundered.

In March 1846, by order of the president, Taylor advanced the 150 miles to the Rio Grande, establishing a fort opposite the Mexican town of Matamoros, which had a large garrison. The river at that point was swift and deep, two hundred yards wide, with twenty-foot-high sheer banks. A standoff resulted, neither tense nor cordial. American soldiers took some interest in the young Mexican women who had a habit of swimming naked in the river in the afternoon, and Kirby watched some of the younger officers swim out to meet them. “The Mexican guards were not, however, disposed to let them come much nearer than the middle of the river,” he wrote, “so they returned after kissing their hands to the tawny damsels which was laughingly returned.”⁹ In the evenings, the citizens of Matamoros would gather by the riverbank to listen to the serenades of the American regimental bands, and it was said that a number of enterprising Americans slipped the pickets to make rendezvous with the forbidden señoritas.

In April, the opposing forces came under the command of Major General Mariano Arista, a red-haired Mexican native who had spent years living in Cincinnati. Moving quickly to end the standoff, Arista reinforced his position at Matamoros and sent a column downstream with orders to cross the river, head north and cut Taylor’s supply line to Port Isabel on the Gulf of Mexico. Taylor strengthened his defenses at the newly named Fort Texas, then withdrew most of his troops to the Gulf, both to protect his lines of communication and to draw fresh supplies. But in separating his forces, Taylor gave the Mexicans an opportunity. Arista laid siege to Fort Texas and placed the bulk of his infantry and cavalry on the road between Taylor and the fort. At Port Isabel, Taylor’s men heard the siege guns in the distance. Despite continuous bombardment over several days, only two Americans died in the siege, one of whom was the commander, Major Jacob Brown, a sergeant in the War of 1812 commissioned for gallantry, after whom the post was renamed.¹⁰

Taylor’s column of 2,200 moved southwest on May 7 and met Arista’s 3,700 men at the road junction of Palo Alto. Shortly before leaving Point Isabel, Nathaniel Wyche Hunter, still with the Second Dragoons, wrote his fiancée, Sarah K. Golding, “I do not know how Arista can avoid fighting—if he does fight we will have a tough thing of it.” Taylor was outnumbered, his force divided, bandits on his flanks, his supplies uncertain, and he faced a well-trained enemy who knew the terrain. But he had told his superiors, “If the enemy oppose my march, in whatever force, I shall fight him.”

The night before the Battle of Palo Alto was miserable; mosquitoes swarmed, and howling, famished wolves prowled the edges of the American encampment. Among the troops was First Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike Inge, Second Dragoons, the Goat of the Class of 1838. He had arrived at Port Isabel only days before with a group of new recruits, just in time to march with Taylor. Zeb was from Tuscaloosa, and was appointed to the Academy from Alabama. He was tall, well mannered, decidedly handsome, and he attracted attention wherever he went. Like many Goats, he was a good-natured and popular fellow. His demerit record was low for an Immortal, and he was made a cadet corporal in his yearling year. But in his two final years at USMA he racked up back-to-back 160 demerit totals and lost his stripes.¹¹ Zeb was known at West Point as an excellent rider, a reputation he took into the service in the dragoons. He was also reputed to be the best swordsman in the service. He served in Florida against the Seminoles, then spent some time on recruiting duty on Long Island, where he met and married Rosa Williams of Maryland. He left his young bride in Baltimore to join the Corps of Observation, taking along his favorite pointer, since he had heard that the hunting in Texas was excellent.

Zeb dropped by the tent of his commander, Captain Charles Augustus May, who was the son of a prominent Washington physician and the grandson of John May, a wealthy Boston merchant and “Son of Liberty” who had participated in the Boston Tea Party. His brother Henry studied law and became a congressman from Maryland, but Charley craved a life of adventure. He joined the Army in 1836 to fight in the Seminole War, during which he captured a chieftain named King Philip, Coacoochee’s father. May was well known at the time as the archetypal dragoon—tall, distinguished, flamboyant, with wildly long hair and a woolly beard that went almost to his waist. He once rode his horse into a fashionable Baltimore hotel lobby on a bet. Longstreet described him as “amiable of disposition, lovable and genial in character.”¹² He and Zeb were boon comrades.

That night, Zeb told Charley that Samuel Ringgold had invited them both for drinks, to make the night pass more agreeably.

“I go to see Sam so often,” May said, “I am afraid I’ll drink up all of his whiskey; but I’ll tell you what I will do.” May proposed a scheme whereby they would join Ringgold, and when offered a drink, May would decline but Zeb would accept. “When you two fill up,” May said, “I’ll say, ‘I hate to see you fellows drinking alone; I think I’ll join you.’” Zeb agreed, and the two went over to Ringgold’s tent.

When Ringgold offered May a drink, he said no, as planned. “Well Zeb, come along,” Sam said, “if Charley won’t take anything, you will, won’t you?”

“Thank you, Sam,” Zeb replied innocently, “I believe not; I, also, must swear off for the night; follow Charley’s example, you know.”¹³

“Remember Your Regiment and Follow Your Officers!”

NOW THE PALO ALTO BATTLE was over. The next morning, Kirby moved forward with his company across the burned battlefield, through the former Mexican positions, witnessing the carnage that the American guns had wrought the previous day.¹⁴ Dozens of bodies lay there, singly and in heaps. One observer described the scene:

One [Mexican] had been nearly severed in two by cannon-ball; others had lost a part of the head, both legs, a shoulder, or the whole stomach. . . . One man, who had been shot between the hips with a large ball, lay doubled up as he fell, with his hands extended, and his face downward, between his knees. Another, whose shoulders and back were shot away, seemed to have died in the act of uttering a cry of horror. Dead horses were scattered about in every direction, and the buzzards and wild dogs were fattening upon their carcasses.¹⁵

The Fifth Infantry was in the advance of Taylor’s column, led by Lieutenant Colonel James Simmons McIntosh. A native of Georgia, McIntosh was a tough old Army regular, a veteran of the War of 1812 who had been bayoneted in the neck and left for dead on the battlefield at Black Rock, New York, in 1814. He had seen service in Florida, at one time commanding Fort Brooks in Tampa, where he was a previous owner of Luis Pacheco, the guide who had led Dade’s column to its unhappy destiny. McIntosh was one of the four officers in Taylor’s war council who had voted to attack. The American troops moved forward steadily, all carrying twenty-six pounds of weapons and ammunition, their packs left behind with the baggage train and the wounded.

Arista had drawn up his forces at Resaca de la Palma, a marshy former riverbed eight miles from Palo Alto. The resaca, or ravine, was two hundred feet wide and ten feet deep, bisected by the main road to Matamoros, and on either side grew dense thorny brush called chaparral. The Mexicans had long used the spot as a camping and training ground—they knew every ditch. They had thrown up earthworks behind the ravine and established a mile-long triple line of defenses, with skirmishers positioned in ambush in the chaparral, men in the riverbed, and reinforcements behind the berm on the far side. Their flanks were anchored in stands of water and heavy brush. Artillery batteries were positioned at the right and left, and seven pieces were placed astride the road. The Mexican forces were veteran infantry regiments, and the Tampico Battalion, which was famed for bravery, supported the center. It was an imposing defensive position, and Arista was so confident it would hold that he left battlefield command to Brigadier General Rómulo Díaz de La Vega and retired to his tent in the rear.

Kirby heard the sound of musket fire as the American skirmishers made first contact. His men moved off the road as Ridgely rushed his light battery forward, then Kirby plunged into the thickets to the left side of the road, followed by his company. Second Lieutenant William Logan Crittenden, also of the Fifth Infantry, followed close behind. Other regiments moved into the brush on the right, and James Longstreet and Sam Grant led their small commands into the fray. The thick, thorny bushes made movement difficult, tearing clothes and scratching hands and faces. Men literally pushed each other through the bracken. Units became disorganized, breaking down into squad-sized groups, and Mexican ambush parties began engaging the men in desperate hand-to-hand combat. Kirby and his brother Edmund fought alongside each other “in the thickest of the fight—men falling around us on all sides.” Reloading was difficult, and the struggle in the chaparral was reduced to bayonet, sword and knife. Kirby eventually tired of swinging his sword and resorted to his fists.

Colonel McIntosh boldly rode his horse into the brambles, exhorting his men to advance, but was waylaid by a squad of Mexican infantry. They killed his horse, and he was thrown to the ground. A Mexican rammed his bayonet down towards the colonel, shoving the spike into his mouth, knocking out some teeth, the point emerging behind his ear, pinning him to the ground. McIntosh grabbed the musket with his left hand for leverage and hacked at his attacker with his sword. Two more enemy set upon McIntosh, shoving bayonets through his arm and hip, fastening him down like an insect. At that moment American soldiers came upon the scene and drove off the attackers, rescuing McIntosh, who was still alive but bleeding profusely and out of the fight. James Duncan, who was pressing forward with his artillery battery and had not seen McIntosh go down, called on him for assistance. The colonel spat through his bloody mouth, “Show me my regiment, and I will give you the support you need.”¹⁶

As the infantry pressed forward towards the Mexican line, enemy artillery fire intensified. “The enemy’s grape and canister from ten pieces, nines and sixes, were whipping the bushes about our ears,” Kirby wrote, “the small shot falling thickly among us.”¹⁷ From the start, Ridgely had been raining fire down on the Mexican batteries from his position at the center of the road, suffering few casualties from the counterfire that went over his head. But the force of the Mexican barrage stalled the advance. Taylor, watching from a position on the road behind Ridgely’s batteries, knew the Mexican guns had to be taken out of action. He beckoned to May, who was sitting mounted with his men farther back down the road. When May trotted up, Taylor said, “Charley, your regiment has never done anything yet—you must take that battery.”

May turned to his men. “We must take that battery,” he said. “Remember your regiment and follow your officers. Forward!” May and Zeb Inge led the squadron of eighty dragoons towards the enemy in a column of fours, sabers drawn. Ahead was Ridgely’s battery; the gunners were bare-chested, working their guns furiously a scant 150 yards from the enemy positions. Ridgely saw the horsemen approaching and understood what was about to happen. He bade the dragoons stop.

“Hold on Charley, while I draw their fire!” he shouted. The American cannon boomed and were answered by the seven Mexican guns, at which point May gave the order to charge. The dragoons gave a terrific yell, spurred their mounts and shot down the road. It was a spectacle that some on the field watched in disbelief. Cavalry charging artillery was reckless; it verged on the suicidal. It was the kind of charge that would take place eight years later on the field of Balaklava when the Light Brigade was cut to pieces in a tragedy immortalized in verse. It was a race against time, the speed of the horses and their riders against the skill of the Mexican gunners, furiously attempting to reload their weapons, as the dragoons crossed the shrinking space separating them. The infantry mêlée continued in the thickets to the right and left of the road as the cavalry thundered by, hair and beards flying in the wind, and the soldiers began cheering the riders on.

May and Inge raced side by side, jockeying for the lead position. May pulled slightly ahead at one point, and Zeb called out, “Hold back Charley, ’tisn’t fair!” Zeb spurred his horse forward and overtook May, as moments later the two bore down on the Mexican tubes, nearly ready to fire, their gunners frantically shoving in powder and grape. Several cannon sounded on the flank; some dragoons went down. But the forward edge of the column was already among the main body of Mexican gunners, slashing at them with their sabers, leaping over the guns, scattering the crews, and crashing through the position to the Mexican works beyond. Some horses balked at the breastwork and threw their riders into the ravine. Corporal James McCauley, a former riding master at West Point, and a half dozen other men broke entirely through the Mexican lines and continued down the road to Matamoros, killing the officer of a platoon of lancers who tried to stop them and putting the rest to flight.¹⁸

Zeb surmounted the berm and reined his horse, turning back towards the battery. At that moment, a small group of Mexican infantrymen popped up from behind the earthworks, leveled their weapons and fired a volley. Zeb was blown from his saddle, landing in a shallow pool in the ravine, his body pierced by nine balls. He died instantly.¹⁹

May attempted to rally his scattered force and returned to the guns, where he found a Mexican officer swinging his sword, imploring his men to fight. May approached the officer with weapon drawn and ordered him to surrender.

“Are you an officer?” he asked.

“I am,” said May.

The Mexican presented his sword. “You receive General La Vega a prisoner of war,” he said.²⁰

Longstreet, who was rushing to assist, said that May’s “appearance as he sat on his black horse Tom, his heavy saber over General La Vega, was grand and picturesque.”²¹

With the pressure of the guns removed, the American infantry surged forward, jumping into the ravine and overwhelming the center of the Mexican line. “The enemy here fought like devils,” Kirby wrote. “Our men, however, knew that if conquered they would get no quarter and there was no possibility of a retreat, and though surrounded by vastly superior number fought with desperation.”²² American troops found a weak point on the right flank, and the Mexican position began to collapse. Kirby and Edmund rushed up the opposite slope of the ravine and in amongst the Mexican guns, Edmund leaping atop one of the pieces, slashing at the defending infantrymen, jumping down and dragging the piece back towards the American lines. Mexican lancers counterattacked but were driven off by concentrated musket fire. The Tampico Battalion valiantly tried to stem the tide, but the bulk of the Mexicans fled and the Tampico were annihilated, their tricolor standard captured.

The Mexicans fled down the road to Matamoros, pursued by dragoons. The flatboats at the riverbank filled quickly and hundreds of fleeing troops leapt into the river to swim across, coming under artillery fire from Fort Brown, whose cheering defenders watched in amazement as the Mexican army disintegrated before their eyes. Scores drowned in the retreat, including some officers and the army’s priest. The Mexicans left behind their baggage train, supplies, Arista’s personal papers, and a large feast that had been prepared to celebrate their expected victory.²³ They lost hundreds killed, wounded and taken prisoner. The Americans suffered 122 casualties, of them 39 killed. May’s command had lost 8 men and 18 horses killed, 10 men and horses wounded. Zeb Inge was buried where he fell. His dog was cared for by his comrades.²⁴

Four days after the battle, Kirby’s brother Edmund wrote their mother, “You may banish all concern for our safety. The war is pretty much over.”²⁵