The Man Who Saved the Union (4 page)

The longer they were separated the more he wished to be near her and the sooner he hoped to marry her. He wasn’t sure he could wait until he left the army. “
Julia, can we hope that your pa will be induced to change his opinion of an army life?” he wrote. “I think he is mistaken about the army life being such an unpleasant one. It is true the movement of the troops from Jefferson Barracks so suddenly and to so outlandish a place”—the pine forest of Louisiana—“would rather create that opinion, but then such a thing hardly occurs once a lifetime.”

The deployment to Texas must have seemed still more outlandish to Frederick Dent, who continued to withhold his permission. The first stop of the Fourth was Corpus Christi, at the mouth of the Nueces River. The regiment wintered there, awaiting the arrival of other units and the outcome of developments in Washington. Grant filled his time writing to Julia and touring the region. He and several other officers rode from Corpus Christi to San Antonio, which had been the capital of Mexican Texas. “
San Antonio has the appearance of being a very old town,” he told Julia. “The houses are all built of stone and are beginning to crumble. The whole place has been built for defense, which by the way was a wise precaution, for until within three or four years it has been the scene of more bloodshed than almost any place of as little importance in the world.… The inhabitants of San Antonio are mostly Mexicans. They seem to have no occupation whatever.”

From the old capital Grant and his comrades rode north to Austin, the new capital. “The whole of the country is the most beautiful that I have ever seen, and no doubt will be filled up very rapidly now that the
people feel a confidence in being protected,” he wrote. For the present the eighty-mile stretch was uninhabited, save for a settlement of Germans at New Braunfels who had just arrived and were living in temporary huts of the sort that soldiers threw up when they lacked tents or barracks.

From Austin back to Corpus Christi the country was similarly unoccupied, except by myriad beasts and fowl. Most of the officers in his group enjoyed hunting, and the expedition feasted nightly on venison and turkey. Grant was less the nimrod. “
Benjamin and I concluded to go down to the creek, which was fringed with timber, much of it the pecan, and bring back a few turkeys,” he wrote of a day near Goliad. “We had scarcely reached the edge of the timber when I heard the flutter of wings overhead, and in an instant I saw two or three turkeys flying away. These were soon followed by more, then more, and more, until a flock of twenty or thirty had left from just over my head. All this time I stood watching the turkeys to see where they flew, with my gun on my shoulder, and never once thought of leveling it at the birds.… I came to the conclusion that as a sportsman I was a failure.”

H
ad Texas been the sum of Polk’s designs on
Mexico, Grant’s regiment might have remained at Corpus Christi. The government of the Texas republic had asserted ownership beyond the Nueces to the Rio Grande, and the United States had accepted the Texas claim upon annexing Texas, but neither the Texans nor the Americans had ever exercised authority in that strip. The Mexican government likewise claimed ownership of the strip, but for an even longer period it too had failed to exercise authority. A diplomatic solution to the territorial dispute might have been arranged had the will existed, not least since almost no one lived in the strip.

The Mexican government doubtless would have summoned the will if given time. Mexico still resented the loss of Texas, yet little enthusiasm existed for reopening the war now that it would mean fighting the United States. Texas had been nothing but trouble for Mexico, which had experienced chronic political turmoil since independence in 1821 and didn’t need any more trouble.

Trouble, though, was just what Polk wanted. Polk’s election had encouraged other expansionists to agitate for more territory; foremost among the agitators was
John L. O’sullivan, a New York editor who for years had been promoting the glories of American democracy. “
Our national birth
was the beginning of a new history,” he wrote. “The boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles.” Amid the Texas controversy O’sullivan blasted the opponents of annexation and trumpeted America’s “manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

O’sullivan’s slogan of Manifest Destiny caught on as a précis of a dominant attitude in America in the 1840s. Americans had always been acquisitive, and as they were an agricultural people their acquisitiveness took the form of a desire for land. For at least a century the American population had doubled each generation; if the American domain didn’t double too, Americans would grow poorer and poorer. Since Puritan times Americans had claimed providential approval for their undertakings; since independence they had appropriated a secular sanction as well. The spread of American sovereignty would expand the realm of liberty, allowing more of the world to participate in the glorious enterprise of self-government.

Americans had never been reluctant to assert their views; a bumptious pride had marked them since the beginning. But during the middle third of the nineteenth century American politics and diplomacy took a particularly aggressive turn. The generation that had proven itself by acquiring independence from Britain departed the scene; the younger generation felt compelled to prove
its
strength and courage. The European empires that had kept American ambition in check had withdrawn or were crumbling.
France abandoned the North American field with Napoleon’s sale of Louisiana to the United States in 1803. Britain stopped trying to contain the Americans after its red-coated troops lost to Jackson at New Orleans in 1815.
Spain surrendered
Florida to the United States and suffered embarrassment after humiliation as one country after another in Central and South America broke free in the 1810s and 1820s. And the ebb of the Europeans left the indigenous peoples of North America more at the mercy of the introduced Americans than ever. The French, British and Spanish had at various times armed and encouraged Indian tribes against American expansion; without the European help the
Indians’ capacity for resistance diminished drastically.

James Polk understood the new psychology and balance of power, and his interpretation of Manifest Destiny caused him to look beyond Texas to
California. Mexico’s northwesternmost province was even more
enticing than Texas, in that it fronted on the Pacific, the greatest of all oceans, and held out the promise that American expansion might continue beyond North American shores. Polk tried to purchase California from Mexico, but the loss of Texas had made the Mexicans prohibitively sensitive to any additional loss of their national domain. Moreover, the political turbulence in Mexico prevented each of the series of governments during this period from consolidating sufficient authority to accomplish a sale of California even if it had wanted to.

Polk interpreted the turbulence in Mexico as evidence of that country’s unfitness to keep California, and he sought an excuse to seize what Mexico wouldn’t sell. In early 1846 he ordered General
Zachary Taylor to march the Fourth Infantry and parts of other regiments, totaling some three thousand troops, from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, deep in the disputed zone and hard against Mexico proper.

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“
E
VERYONE REJOICES
AT THE IDEA OF LEAVING
C
ORPUS
C
HRISTI,”
Grant wrote Julia. The months of waiting had been wearing for the soldiers, and they were eager to earn their pay. The purpose of the redeployment was plain enough. “We are to go into camp on this side of the Rio Grande just opposite to Matamoras, a town of considerable importance in Mexico, and, as we are informed, occupied by several thousand troops who it is believed by many will make us fight for our ground before we will be allowed to occupy it.”

Grant noted that circumstances didn’t favor the American side. The Mexicans, besides outnumbering the Americans, enjoyed the advantage of position. “If we are attacked, in the present reduced state of the troops here the consequences may be much against us.” Yet death appeared less likely than inconvenience. “We may be taken prisoners, it is true, and taken to the City of Mexico and then when we will be able to get away is entirely uncertain.”

Hazard apart, the redeployment complicated his plans with Julia. “In my previous letters,” he told her, “I have spoken a great deal of resigning, but of course I could not think of such a thing now just at a time when it is probable that the services of every officer will be called into requisition.” He wouldn’t stop thinking of her, though. “I will write to you very often and look forward with a great deal of anxiety to the time when I may see you again and claim a kiss for my long absence. Do you wear the ring with the letters U. S. G. in it, Julia? I often take yours off to look at the name engraved in it.”

The southward march took Grant and the others across some of the
finest natural pasture in America. “
The country was a rolling prairie, and from the higher ground, the vision was obstructed only by the earth’s curvature,” he wrote later. Countless wild horses made the region their home. “As far as the eye could reach to our right, the herd extended. To the left, it extended equally. There was no estimating the number of animals in it; I have no idea that they could all have been corralled in the State of Rhode Island, or Delaware, at one time. If they had been, they would have been so thick that the pasturage would have given out the first day.”

Taylor’s small army encountered Mexican forces at a minor stream some thirty miles north of the Rio Grande. “
A parley took place between Gen. Taylor and their commanding officer, whose name I have forgotten,” Grant explained to Julia. “The result of which was that if we attempted to cross they would fire upon us.… He pledged his honor that the moment we put our foot into the water to cross he would fire upon us and war would commence.” Taylor responded that the Americans would cross regardless of what the Mexicans did. “Whereupon they left and were seen no more,” Grant remarked. This was the more noteworthy in that the Americans were quite vulnerable amid the crossing. “When the troops were in the water up to their necks a small force on shore might have given them a great deal of trouble.” Grant and the others took a lesson. “I think after making such threats and speaking so positively of what they would do, to then let so fine an opportunity to execute what they had threatened pass unimproved, shows anything but a decided disposition to drive us from the soil.”

A thirsty march across a sandy desert brought the Americans to their objective, which Grant found disappointing. “No doubt you suppose the Rio Grande, from its name and appearance on the map, to be a large and magnificent stream,” he wrote Julia. “But instead of that it is a small muddy stream of probably from 150 to 200 yards in width and navigable for only small sized steamers.”

The Americans pitched camp opposite Matamoros. “The city from this side of the river bears a very imposing appearance and no doubt contains from four to five thousand inhabitants,” Grant wrote. “Apparently there are a large force of Mexican troops preparing to attack us.” On the night of the Americans’ arrival the Mexican defenders threw up a wall of sandbags on which they mounted small artillery pieces aimed at the American camp. The Mexican commander published a warning to the
Americans. “It was a long, wordy, and threatening document,” Grant told Julia. “He said that the citizens of Mexico were ready to expose their bare breasts to the Rifles of the Hunters of the Mississippi.… The Invaders of the North would have to reap their Laurels at the points of their sharpened swords.… The Rio Grande would be our Sepulcher.”

Grant wasn’t worried. “Already they have boasted and threatened so much and executed so little that it is generally believed that all they are doing is mere bombast and show, intended to intimidate our troops.”

C
onsequently the outbreak of hostilities surprised the Americans. Taylor sent patrols in various directions from his camp; in late April one of these, composed of sixty cavalrymen, tangled with a Mexican force of two thousand. A dozen Americans were killed and the rest taken prisoner.

As news of the affair was relayed to Washington, where Polk awaited just such an incident, Taylor reconsidered his situation. His supply line ran back to Port Isabel, thirty miles north and east through territory open to Mexican troops. A swift strike by the Mexicans might cut him off, trapping his outnumbered army in hostile country. He determined to leave a small force on the Rio Grande and march the rest of his troops to Port Isabel.

“
We marched nearly all night the first night, and you may depend, my dear Julia, that we were all very much fatigued,” Grant wrote. “We start again at 1 o’clock today.” Yet even as Taylor secured his supplies, he and the other Americans received evidence that fighting had escalated behind them. “There was about six hundred troops left in our Fort opposite Matamoros,” Grant told Julia, “and the presumption is they have been attacked, for we have heard the sound of artillery from that direction ever since day light this morning.”

The prospect of battle filled Grant with trepidation. “
A young second-lieutenant who had never heard a hostile gun before, I felt sorry that I had enlisted,” he recollected from the distance of four decades and dozens of subsequent battles. “A great many men, when they smell battle afar off, chafe to get into the fray. When they say so themselves they generally fail to convince their hearers that they are as anxious as they would like to make believe, and as they approach danger they become more subdued. This rule is not universal, for I have known a few men who were always aching for a fight when there was no enemy near, who
were as good as their word when the battle did come. But the number of such men is small.”