The Year of Decision 1846, page 55
He also arrested the principal local priest, Ramón Ortiz, with whom he had had trouble ever since he occupied the town. Ortiz, known to the First Missouri as the kindly protector of the Texans who had been captured on the abortive Santa Fe expedition of 1841, was the head conspirator of an underground nativist movement. An accomplished and intelligent man, he was a fiery patriot who could not love the conquest and was directing a widespread opposition. Doniphan took him and several other prominent citizens as hostages. It was just as well, for a few days after the army started south it got word that trouble had broken out in Santa Fe.
This was the brief but bloody uprising known as the Taos Revolt. There was a group of New Mexicans who had not tranquilly accepted the conquest of their country. Among them, probably the most forceful, was Diego Archuleta, the lieutenant governor who had wanted to oppose Kearny’s entrance and whom James Magoffin had persuaded with a promise that the conquest would not extend farther west than the Rio Grande. He and others who had both courage and patriotism formed an underground organization which planned an uprising. Kearny left Santa Fe convinced that the province was pacified, but Doniphan, Price, and Charles Bent (the governor appointed by Kearny) became aware of the smoldering ground fire. They were confident, however, that the American force was large enough to prevent any outbreak of violence. They were alert and when Price became military commandant, on Doniphan’s invasion of the Indian country, he instituted much more stringent regulations for both the troops and the civilian population.
They were certainly needed. For a large part of the blame must rest on the Second Missouri, the regiment which Price had brought down the trail. Doniphan’s command — whether because they had experienced both the risk and the satisfaction of conquest or because Doniphan had some faculty of leadership that Price lacked — had not antagonized the natives. But the Second Missouri, in effect, had turned Santa Fe into a roaring Wild West town, full of jubilation, offensiveness, and personal insult.
The conspirators arranged an uprising in Santa Fe for December 26, with elaborate plans for the seizure of the governor and commandant, the capture of the artillery, and synchronized attacks on various portions of the garrison. The American officials got word of it, however, seized all the principal conspirators except Archuleta and his first assistant, Tomas Ortiz, and issued a proclamation denouncing the revolution. They believed that they had prevented violence, but they miscalculated. There were deeper and deadlier hatreds at work than they realized. For one thing, the blood lust of the Pueblo Indians had been aroused. The fair god from the east who had come to restore their ancient liberties had by now somehow got identified in their dark minds with the conquistadors.
This lust was heightened by the conspiracy and its suppression at Santa Fe. Trouble broke out at Taos, whither Governor Bent had gone to visit his family, in the belief that the crisis had passed. On January 19, 1847, a mob composed mostly of Pueblo killed Bent in his own home, and five other Americans. In other parts of the province other Americans, about fifteen all told, were killed, sometimes with revolting cruelty, and bands of insurrectionists formed rapidly. A wave of thoroughly justified alarm ran across New Mexico.
Price acted promptly and effectively. He marched north from Santa Fe with part of his regiment and a company of volunteers led by the Bents’ partner, Ceran St. Vrain, and won a bloody skirmish at La Cañada. He was joined by more of the Second Missouri and a company of Kearny’s Dragoons from Albuquerque under Captain Burgwin. (One of those that had hastened to protect the traders’ camp at Valverde.) Nearly five hundred strong now, through a spell of bitter cold, they came over the mountains, won another skirmish, and finally blew in the pueblo of Taos itself on February 4. It made a bloody end to a bloody campaign — Burgwin was among those killed — and New Mexicans and Pueblo would think hard before making another conspiracy. Most of the ringleaders had been killed in battle. Price arrested others and the talents of Francis Preston Blair, Jr., lately occupied in drawing up a civil code for New Mexico, were now engaged to prepare a prosecution.4
The news of this revolt traveled surprisingly slowly and Doniphan had started south when it reached him. Clark had arrived with Weightman’s artillery on February 1, and a week later the First Missouri took up the march again. The unruly traders were now commanded to form themselves into a military battalion and take part in their own defense. They did so and Samuel Owens, the half-brother of one of A. Lincoln’s fiancées, was made their major. Over two hundred of them were enrolled and they had more than three hundred wagons. The arrival of the artillery had brought Doniphan’s strength to 924 effectives.
They were caught between an unknown enemy in Chihuahua and a revolution in New Mexico, but they were marching again, the job they did best. They left the Rio Grande and soon reached a difficult two-day desert. “Traveling through these jornadas in a cold night,” Private Edwards says, “brings many to the recollection of warm houses, the soft feather beds, and the cool springs at home.” It brought worse discomforts than the memory of home, and the second day nearly did for them. The train stuck in deep sand, had to cut loose many oxen, abandon a couple of wagons, and jettison four tons of flour and much other food. Even the traders threw away some of the merchandise that usually outvalued the lives of their employes. That second day was torrid and near the end of it the Doniphesias were close to stampeding. A providential rainstorm lightened the last miles, however, and saved the dying horses and oxen. They camped for a day just beyond the desert. Then they went on to Carrizal and, on February 21, to Ojo Caliente. This abandoned hacienda was named for an enormous hot spring, where the whole army, including its commander, got a bath.
Beyond the hot spring they made a fifty-five-mile jornada and, on the far side, got themselves into a prairie fire. One of Gilpin’s campfires spread into the mountains, where it burned beside them throughout a day’s march. Lieutenant Gibson remembered an old song, “Fire in the mountains! run, boys, run!” and that night they had to run, when a gale drove the flames down to their camp. There was a wild half hour while the army set backfires, galloped the horses and wagons about, and swore at one another in pyrotechnic light till the show was over. Still another kind of campfire had been added to their memories.
Doniphan had been keeping them in military formation the last few days and his reconnoissance parties — under Reid, Kirker, and Forsythe — had seen evidence of preparations ahead. On the night of February 27 he camped some fifteen miles north of a creek called the Sacramento, which was about the same distance north of the city of Chihuahua. His scouts and some stragglers who had come into camp had told him that the Mexicans had gathered at the Sacramento and were prepared to fight him there. The information was accurate; the First Missouri was going to have a battle.
Chihuahua had raised and equipped a sizable force, after floundering through the period of factionalism, jealousy, and treachery that attended every part of the Mexican war effort. It amounted to about three thousand organized troops and perhaps a thousand additional pressed peons who were armed principally with machetes. It did not have Santa Anna to drill it, however, and he was the only one who could make marksmen out of peaceable, oppressed people not used to bearing arms. Its general was a trained engineer but neither he, his soldiers, nor the supporting population had acquired any respect for their enemy. Throughout the war Mexican armies were always being half paralyzed at the beginning of an action by the discovery that the cowardly gringos would fight. As scouts reported the approach of Doniphan’s command, an exhilaration seized Chihuahua. Battle rhetoric in newspapers, broadsides, and the sermons of priests promised everyone an overwhelming victory. About a thousand people went out to make a bleachers at the expected battleground, and the army took with it a thousand prepared ropes. They would make a coffle in which to lead the captured Americans to Mexico City.
Conde, the commander, had prepared a fortified position near the crossing of the Sacramento, where the hills came in and narrowed the approach. He was a first-rate engineer and brought against the First Missouri the science of fortification which reached back all the way to Roman times and had been maturing ever since. The works would have edified Uncle Toby and should have been impregnable to assault. Conde failed to consider only one eventuality: what if the Americans did not know the textbook approach?
He should have considered it for, after reconnoitering the position, Doniphan and his staff saw no reason why they need come by the route prepared for them. It was a pretty little battle, the action of February 28. An orthodox analysis would find that Sacramento reinforced the lessons of Taylor’s battles and once more proved the virtues of artillery. For the six small cannon which were divided between Clark and Weightman outranged and outshot the Mexican artillery and were decisive. They broke the Mexican lancers, battered in the redoubts, and shot concentrations of infantry to pieces. So by the texts technology won the battle.
But the texts must be thrown away and the victory allocated to two things: frontier craftsmanship and the readiness of the private soldier to improvise tactics as required.… On the morning of February 28 they started out from camp, Clark’s band rendering “Yankee Doodle.” On the way to the Sacramento Doniphan gave them a battle formation new to the art of war but excellently adapted to the circumstances. He formed his train and the wagons of the traders in four parallel columns — the moving fort of any caravan on the Santa Fe trail when it was on guard against Indian attack. In extremity the wagons could have formed a corral, within which the army could have held off many times its number. He put his cavalry, infantry, and artillery in the intervals between columns, where it was ready to deploy at need. The classical American symbol, a train of white-tops, moved compactly toward the Sacramento. Approaching the fortifications, Doniphan took his formation to the flank, half turning the Mexican position instead of coming from the front as he was expected to do. On the way to the flank there was an arroyo and the Mexican lancers might have cut a disorganized train to pieces. But this train was not disorganized. The high art of the bullwhackers scored a military triumph in getting the wagons across swiftly and in order, to the orchestrated profanity that was appropriate.
It was a wild and stimulating time. The now frustrated redoubts opened fire at long range and the panoplied lancers formed under banners. Doniphan ordered his troops out into line and Clark’s artillery shattered the lancers before they got well started. Thereafter for an hour the artillery commands banged at each other. Clark had made his battalion (part of it was a St. Louis militia organization of honorable traditions) first-rate artillerists. Though the fuses were faulty and many shells exploded prematurely, he put down a successful barrage. The Mexican pieces were old, their powder was bad. The solid shot they fired came up visibly, bounding and ricocheting. The farm boys watched them come, yelled their appreciation of the show, made bets with one another, and dodged so successfully that the only casualties were horses.
The Mexicans made another charge, at the rear and the wagons this time, and the traders who could shoot as well as the army beat it off without trouble. Doniphan moved his lines nearer the half-turned redoubts and musketry fire blazed everywhere. The Missourians were shooting in earnest but the truth is that the Mexicans, who had had no practice with arms and had been battered by artillery, mostly contented themselves with hoisting their pieces over the parapets and discharging them at the horizon. Doniphan, who sat on his horse and cursed with the homespun eloquence of his culture, watched the army work up to within four hundred yards of the redoubts, and then launched three companies of cavalry and Weightman’s artillery in a charge at the Mexican guns. It started out gaudily but his adjutant, DeCourcy (who was rumored to be drunk), halted two of the companies halfway across. Doniphan got a bad scare and the halted companies stood cursing with fire coming at them from two directions. Weightman galloped his two howitzers halfway to the redoubts, unlimbered, and began to fire again. Owens, the trader, with two companions galloped down the front of the redoubts and got himself killed. Reid had not obeyed the order to halt but took his company up to the parapets and over them. The two companies that had halted joined him and the forts were carried in a few minutes of chaotic battle. The Missourians used their sabers, their clubbed muskets, convenient stones, and even their fists. The few minutes were gory enough to provide them with a lifetime of reminiscence — beheaded Mexicans, Mexicans split lengthwise, Mexicans shot down on the run, Mexicans locked in death grapples with their assailants, scared horses stampeding, roar of artillery, mountain men on one knee drawing beads, and the boys from home acting much as they did at a turkey shoot.
The Mexicans broke and ran. Some of them tried to rally on the other hill, but simultaneously Gilpin’s wing swarmed over those fortifications and now everyone was running. The First Missouri, an army of victorious individualists, milled round for anybody’s horse that was handy and began a pursuit. They sabered Mexicans on the run, they chased them down the river, they chased them into the hills where some Apache who had taken box seats for the spectacle killed a number, and a big moon came up and the Mexicans were still running. Some of them ran the full fifteen miles to Chihuahua. The Americans came straggling back to the battlefield by moonlight, found the surgeons of both armies gathering in the wounded, and answered the yells of their officers, who were trying to bring the victors together again as an army.
They had been fighting for more than three hours. Owens, the trader, had been killed. (Legend says that he had some romantic reason for wanting to die and had dressed in white clothes before the battle.) A sergeant had received a wound from which he died, and seven others had minor wounds. On their part, they had killed more than three hundred Mexicans, wounded at least as many more, taken forty prisoners, and permanently broken resistance in the state of Chihuahua. While the wounded screamed in the mesquite, the First Missouri ranged over the field to gather in the spoils. They were considerable, for Chihuahua had done well by its defenders. The Doniphesias got ten cannon and a miscellany of antique trench pieces, hundreds of small arms, many tons of powder, seven elegant carriages belonging to generals and their guests, Conde’s field desk, scores of wagons and carts, hundreds of horses and mules and beeves, thousands of sheep. They got the ropes in which they were to have been marched to Mexico City and the black pirate flag with death’s-heads that had been flaunted at El Brazito. They got a paymaster’s box with $3000 in copper coin and they got an amount of silver which may have been $5000 or $50,000 but was carefully not reported to their officers. They loaded their pockets, belts, and haversacks with loot and came back to report themselves.
So they had still another kind of campfire, victorious under a big moon with the wounded moaning near by and Missouri two thousand miles from home, pounding one another’s backs, wringing the officers’ hands, and beginning to tell the stories that would bore their grandchildren. The fires blazed up and the boys cooked a meal, a big meal. The spoils had included a quantity of bottles, kegs, and skins of Chihuahua wine. Missouri settled down to celebrate not only the defeat of a hostile army but its total dispersion.
The next day, March 1, Doniphan sent Mitchell and an advance guard to occupy Chihuahua and on March 2 rode at the head of his column into this, the principal city of northern Mexico, which had fallen to a handful of ragged boys from the prairies. Forgive him if he swaggered, “not unlike a strutting gander,” and forgive the boys, frowsy, ill-smelling, and unshaved, if, with the bands producing “Yankee Doodle” again and “Washington’s March,” they told each other that they had kept their oath and captured the Halls of Montezuma. A populace which had been promised the complete destruction of the invading heretics was panic-stricken, gaped at the conquerors in terror mingled with disbelief, and hurried out the prettiest señoritas with melons, tortillas, and more wine. The resident Americans, who had barricaded their houses in fear of a mobbing, rushed out to welcome their deliverers. They couldn’t believe what they saw, for no one ever looked less like heroes than the First Missouri. Some of them hurried back and nailed the doors shut again, convinced that these were some Apache whom Doniphan had sent ahead to prepare his coming. The army swaggered and yelled behind its bands — past the mint, past the great cathedral, round the plaza, and on to ceremonies of capitulation. Private Robinson, nineteen years old a few days back, wrote in his diary a good soldier’s summary: “We rode through the principal streets and public square, and on a rocky hill on the south side of the city fired a national salute in honor of the conquest, stole wood enough to get supper, and went to bed as usual among the rocks.”
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At the Cabinet meeting of May 4 Polk heard Secretary Marcy read “Col. Donophan’s” report on Sacramento, and spoke of it in his diary as “one of the most decisive and brilliant achievements of the War.” He was occupied with the quarrel between Kearny and Frémont or would unquestionably have said more about Sacramento. What he did say is not open to question. Eight months after the administration strategists had laid out this campaign in the Executive office, an improvised organization had fulfilled the President’s intent, deep in enemy country, without support from the War Department, by application of their native talents to the task at hand. Frontiersmen easily changing phase, farmers becoming soldiers, they had conducted a probably impossible campaign to victory and made secure their portion, a large one, of a foreign conquest.
