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US Army Logistics During the US-Mexican War and the Postwar Period, 1846-1860

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US Army Logistics During the US-Mexican War and the Postwar Period, 1846-1860 CATALYST FOR CHANGE IN THE BORDERLANDS: U.S. ARMY LOGISTICS DURING THE U.S.-MEXICAN WAR AND THE POSTWAR PERIOD, 1846-1860 Christopher N. Menking Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS December 201 9 APPROVED: Richard McCaslin, Major Professor Sandra Mendiola Garcia, Committee Member Andrew Torget, Committee Member Alexander Mendoza, Committee Member Robert Wooster, Outside Reader Jennifer Jensen Wallach, Chair of the Department of History Tamara L. Brown, Executive Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Victor Prybutok, Dean of the Toulouse Graduate School Menking, Christopher N. Catalyst for Change in the Borderlands: U.S. Army Logistics during the U.S.-Mexican War and the Postwar Period, 1846-1860. Doctor of Philosophy (History), December 2019, 323 pp., 3 figures, 3 appendices, bibliography, 52 primary sources, 140 secondary sources. This dissertation seeks to answer two primary questions stemming from the war between the United States and Mexico: 1) What methods did the United States Army Quartermaster Department employ during the war to achieve their goals of supporting armies in the field? 2) In executing these methods, what lasting impact did the presence of the Quartermaster Department leave on the Lower Río Grande borderland, specifically South Texas during the interwar period from 1848-1860? In order to obtain a complete understanding of what the Department did during the war, a discussion of the creation, evolution, and methodology of the Quartermaster Department lays the foundation for effective analysis of the department’s wartime methods and post-war influence. It is equally essential to understand the history of South Texas prior to the Mexican War under the successive control of Spain, Mexico and the United States and how that shaped the wartime situation. The wartime discussion of Department operations is divided into three chapters, reflecting each of the main theaters and illustrating the respective methods and influence within each area. The final two chapters address the impact of the war on South Texas and how the presence of the Quartermaster Department on the Río Grande served as a catalyst for economic, social, and political changes in this borderland region. Combining primary source analysis of wartime logistics with a synthesis of divergent military and social histories of the Lower Río Grande borderland demonstrates the influence of the Department on South Texas during the mid-nineteenth century. The presence of the Quartermaster Department created an economic environment that favored Anglo-American entrepreneurs, allowing them to grow in wealth and begin to supplant the traditional Tejano/Mexican-American power structure in South Texas. Despite remaining an ethnic minority, Anglos used this situational advantage to dominate the region politically. This outcome shaped South Texas for decades to follow. Copyright 2019 by Christopher N. Menking ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2. SOUTH TEXAS BEFORE THE WAR .............................................................................. 19 CHAPTER 3. A HISTORY OF THE QUARTERMASTER DEPARTMENT: EVOLUTION AND METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................................ 61 CHAPTER 4. LOGISTICS AND NEW FORTS IN NORTH MEXICO AND SOUTH TEXAS .................... 109 CHAPTER 5. WESTERN CAMPAIGNS ........................................................................................... 154 CHAPTER 6. CENTRAL MEXICO .................................................................................................... 189 CHAPTER 7. ECONOMIC AND GEOGRAPHIC RESULTS ................................................................ 244 CHAPTER 8. SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES AFTER THE WAR....................................... 277 CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 299 APPENDIX A. TEAMSTER CONTRACT SAMPLE ............................................................................ 304 APPENDIX B. MRS. CHASE, HEROINE OF TAMPICO .................................................................... 306 APPENDIX C. LIST OF BOATS CHARTERED BY THE QUARTERMASTER DEPARTMENT ................ 308 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................ 310 iii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The war between the United States and Mexico is one of the least studied conflicts in United States history despite its significance in the course of American history. The conflict represents more than just a territorial land grab based on the vague notion of Manifest Destiny. While there is no doubt that territorial expansion during the campaign and presidency of James K. Polk (1844-1848) played a crucial role in shaping the nation, it is the ramifications of what the war itself meant militarily, socially, and politically for the United States that illustrates the true impact of the conflict. Militarily, United States-Mexico War was the first fought by the United States almost entirely on foreign soil. It also included the first occupation of a foreign capital, the largest amphibious landing to date, and the first large-scale test of West Point-trained officers, many of whom would later come to prominence in the American Civil War. Socially, the war created numerous tensions as political borders shifted in what became the southwestern United States, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to California. Such changes affected the Tejanos who resided the Río Grande Valley and experienced dramatic social changes. The Mexican- American Tejanos had to adapt to dramatic shifts in the social hierarchy and economic opportunities. Much of this hardship arose from logistical policies developed and implemented during the war. While the land gained from Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the Mexican Cession, reignited national-level clashes over the expansion of slavery, starting with the Wilmot Proviso, continuing through the Compromise of 1850, and ultimately ending with the Civil War, the U.S. Army faced its own challenges in expanding its new logistical systems 1 into the newly acquired Río Grande borderland, which in turn underwent a period of dramatic transformations. This dissertation analyzes the logistical aspects of the United States-Mexico War on an operational level. It also addresses the results of the war, specifically the logistical networks established in the Río Grande Valley (South Texas) during the conflict and postwar era, 1846- 1860. This work contends that adequate logistical support was a vital but unappreciated element for the effective operations of American regular and volunteer forces during the war, and it had an equally important and unanticipated impact on South Texas. The goal of this dissertation is to produce an analytical narrative of logistical operations during the war and the economic, political, and social results these operations had within South Texas. This study addresses many themes such as logistics, operation level strategy relating to logistics, the Army Quartermaster Department, the development of the region along the border with Mexico, and the relationship between war and society in the Río Grande borderland. While the United States-Mexico War is gaining more attention in recent years, particularly with a new general history of the war published in 2017 by Peter Guardino, this dissertation focuses on an overlooked aspects of the war. 1 The logistical efforts of the Quartermaster Department and their effect on South Texas require far more investigation to expand the depth of the United States-Mexico War historiography. During the war with Mexico, the United States Army marched into three primary theaters: present-day northern Mexico, central Mexico, and what became the North American southwest. This represents the largest 1 Peter Guardino, Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). 2 logistical operation undertaken at that point in time by the Army—by several orders of magnitude. Despite the military achievement of defeating of Mexico, which crossed oceans and vast portions of the continent, there is virtually nothing written on the logistics that made it possible. Logistics officer and historian Charles R. Shrader wrote in 1992 that a study of “US Army Logistics in the Mexican War of 1846-1848 . should be started tomorrow.”2 Now, twenty-five years later, there has still been no significant study on logistics regarding that conflict to fill that historiographical void. This dissertation takes the first step toward completing the task set forth by Shrader by creating a thorough account of the logistical efforts during the war for each of the three major theaters, present-day northern Mexico, the west, and Central Mexico. This study mainly focuses on northern and central Mexico for a significant portion of the study since the largest United States armies operated there and comprised the majority of troop deployments. Furthermore, this dissertation also helps expand the literature on the Army in the nineteenth century regarding operational history. According to Army historian Samuel Watson, with the exception of a few works by Joseph G. Dawson, “there
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