Last in Their Class. James Robbins
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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