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Monterrey Is Ours! the Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Dana, 1845-1847

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Monterrey Is Ours! the Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Dana, 1845-1847 University of Kentucky UKnowledge Latin American History History 1990 Monterrey Is Ours! The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Dana, 1845-1847 Napoleon Tecumseh Dana Robert H. Ferrell Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Dana, Napoleon Tecumseh and Ferrell, Robert H., "Monterrey Is Ours! The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Dana, 1845-1847" (1990). Latin American History. 4. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_latin_american_history/4 MONTERREY IS OURS! 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 This page intentionally left blank 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 MONTERREY IS OURS! The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Dana 1845~1847 Edited By ROBERT H. FERRELL THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 1990 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0336 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication° Data Dana. Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh, 1822-1905. Monterrey is ours! : the Mexican war letters of Lieutenant Dana, 1845-1847 / edited by Robert H. Ferrell. p. cm. ISBN: 978-0-8131-5242-4 1. Dana, Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh, 1822-1905--Correspondence, 2. United States-History-War with Mexico, 1845-1848-Personal narratives. 3. Monterey, Battle of, 1846. 4. Soldiers-United States---Correspondence. I. Ferrell, Robert H. II. Title. E411.D25 1990 973.6'28.---dc20 8-29351 CIP This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. § Contents List of Maps vii Introduction ix A Note on the Editing xiv 1. On the Nueces 1 2. Tedium 22 3. The Rio Grande 36 4. War 55 5. Matamoros 72 6. To Reynosa and Camargo 91 7. To Monterrey 106 8. Monterrey Is Ours 122 9. Life in Monterrey 140 10. The Long March 155 11. Tampico 174 12. Veracruz 18512.Veracruz 201 Acknowledgments 213 Illustration Credits 213 Index 215 This page intentionally left blank Maps 1. The Texas Border 6 2. Opening of the War 38 3. Campaigns of General Taylor 86 4. Battle of Monterrey, September 19-24, 1846 126 5. The Long March 156 6. Veracruz and the Hinterland 188 This page intentionally left blank Introduction NapoleonJackson Tecumseh Dana-what a name, so fully reminis­ cent of his time!-was born in Eastport, Maine, on April 15, 1822, and died in this present century, July IS, 1905, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His life thus bridged most of the nineteenth century, if one defines it historically, from the final defeat of Napoleon Bo­ naparte at Waterloo in1815 until the First Battle of the Marne in1914. Dana came from an illustrious family, the descendants of Richard Dana who settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in1640. The Danas were lawyers, clergymen, poets, essayists, and novelists. Napoleon Dana was the nephew of the famous chemists James F. and Samuel L. Dana. His father, Nathaniel Giddings Dana, was a graduate of West Point and a professional army officer. The son was born at a U.S. Army fort. Young Dana entered the U.S. Military Academy in 1838 at the age of sixteen and graduated four years later with the class of 1842. He was commissioned in the Seventh Infantry and was still a secondlieutenantwhentheMexican War openedin1846. Promoted to first lieutenant the next year, he was brevetted after the Battle of Cerro Gordo, which he barely survived. He had been among the men storming Telegraph Hill, was severely wounded, and was left on the field for deadbutwas picked up bya burial partyafter thirty­ six hours. After the war with Mexico he was eventually stationed at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, where he observed the opportunities in what was then the American West. He left the army in 1855 to open a banking business in St. Paul. The Civil War proved as notable a chapter in Dana's life as had been the Mexican War a decade and a halfearlier. He had continued his interest in military affairs, serving as brigadier general of the Minnesota militia, and in 1861 he became colonel of the First Min­ nesota Infantry. A unit composed of lumbermen, fully able to withstand the first shocks of battle, the regiment participated in the Battle of Ball's Bluff, in the main a Union disaster, and afterward helped evacuate the defeated troops to the Maryland shore of the x Introduction Potomac. A brigadier general in 1862, Dana commanded a brigade of the Second Corps in the peninsular campaign and at Antietam, where again he was badly wounded. After a long convalescence, during which he was promoted to major g~neral, he organized the defenses of Philadelphia at the time of the movement into Pennsyl­ vania of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Gener­ al Dana later took a command in Texas and drove the Confederate forces from territory around the coast where he had fought the Mexicans in 1846-47. Toward the end of the war he held commands in inactive areas along the Mississippi. Resigning from the army in 1865, Dana resumed his business career and until 1871 was general agent of the American-Russia Commercial Company of Alaska, during the era of the purchase of Alaska by the United States and its organization as a federal territo­ ry. He then became an executive of railroad companies, holding among other offices the presidency of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy. In the latter1890s he was deputy commissioner of pensions in Washington. Under a special Act of Congress in1894 he received back his regular army rank of captain and retired with a pension. Dana's letters are a remarkable testimony to his many qualities and demonstrate that he was a man of his time. They show a youth in the full vigor of life, looking to advancement of his career, to be sure, but also to the increasing greatness, he believed, of his coun­ try. Like so many young men during the 1840s he envisioned the United States as Young America, a country not yet afflicted, per­ haps never to be afflicted, by the ineptitudes of the countries of Europe. As in that wonderful, lively decade there was a Young Italy and a Young Hungary, so the United States in its youthfulness was ready to take the lands of weak Mexico. Racism formed a part of Dana's outlook. As the war turned into hard fighting, more than the Americans expected, he revised his views of Mexican abilities. By the time of Cerro Gordo, he was willing to believe that Mexican soldiers were worthy enemies of the U.S. Army. Still, he continued to feel that Mexicans were hardly the equals of Americans. In his letters Dana appears as an imaginative soldier, never just a commentator remarking movements of the foe. He possessed an eye for strategy and discerned the purposes of colonels and gener­ als, not merely listening for army gossip but attempting to deter­ mine how the army's leaders were solving their problems in Mexico. He watched for tactical leadership, measuring it against principles he had learned at the little academy along the Hudson Introduction xi where a few dozen cadets had sought to absorb the wisdom of aging veterans of the War of 1812. Dana also had a remarkable relationship with his wife, the former Susan Sandford, whom he married in 1844 just before his regiment went down to the Texas border to join the forces of General Zachary Taylor. The "Dear Sue" of the letters, known also as "Dearest Sue" and "My own darling wife," etc., was a bundle of contradictions, and Dana had all he could do to handle her. She was a prim, correct girl when Dana happened upon her. She was also emotional and young. She was receiving the attentions of a suitor, whom her future husband promptly sent packing, but she seems to have sent him away too. At that moment her father resolved mat­ ters. He bade Dana take his daughter as quickly as possible­ which, after all, was the way Major Sandford was himself about to acquire a new wife. Dana pressed his case, and Sue acquiesced. As the reader will discern, the marriage began with Sue in love yet subject to bouts of melancholia that sometimes drove her absent husband wild. In November1845, when he was on the Texas border and the Mexican War was only a few mo~ths away, he was so moved by Sue's inability to cope that he took leave of his regiment and hastened back to her.
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