Into Mexico with General Scott / When attached to the Fourth United States Infantry, Division of Major-General William J. Worth, Corps of the famous Major-General Winfield Scott, known as Old Fuss and Feathers, campaign of 1847, lad Jerry Cameron marched and fought beside Second Lieutenant U. S. Grant all the way from Cera Cruz to the City of Mexico, where six thousand American soldiers planted the Stars and Stripes in the midst of one hundred and fifty thousand amazed people

by Edwin L. Sabin

[2] Second Lieutenant Thomas J. Jackson became the celebrated “Stonewall” Jackson, Confederate general in the Civil War.

The storming column of the First Division stood formed, carrying scaling ladders, fascines or bunches of fagots for filling ditches, pickaxes and crowbars. The Voltigeurs and the Ninth and Fifteenth Infantry under General Cadwalader were to support the storming column. The Eleventh and the Fourteenth were to support Lieutenant Jackson’s battery section and head off the cavalry gathered in the northwest. The other regiment of the Third Division, the Twelfth Infantry, and the Third Dragoons had been left to guard Tacubaya and one of the supply bases south.

Soon after breakfast another American column appeared, marching in for the south side of Chapultepec. It was the General Persifor Smith brigade of General Twiggs’ Second Division: the First Artillery, the Third Infantry, and the Mounted Rifles afoot. The Quitman Fourth Division of Volunteers and Marines and the Smith brigade were to assault the rock of Chapultepec from the south and the southeast, while the Pillow men assaulted it from the west. The Colonel Riley brigade of the Second Division—the Fourth Artillery, the Second Infantry and the Seventh Infantry, with Taylor’s First Artillery battery and Steptoe’s battery of the Fourth Artillery—were to hammer the south gates as a blind.

The army for action numbered about seven thousand. The Mexicans were supposed to be defending Chapultepec with seven batteries and seven breastworks, manned by two thousand to six thousand troops. And Santa Anna had fifteen or twenty thousand troops in reserve.

The wait proved very long. The heavy batteries thundered, sprinkling the castle of Chapultepec and the entrenchments with solid shot and shell. The Lieutenant Reno howitzers paid especial attention to the wall at the foot of the hill and the ditch behind it. The roof-tops of Tacubaya and of all the buildings extending along the Tacubaya road to Chapultepec were black with spectators; the walls and roofs of the City of Mexico were crowded like the seats of an amphitheater.

The sun was high when, at a quarter to eight o’clock on this morning of September 13, two aides galloped out from General Scott’s headquarters in Tacubaya. Down they came, the one straight for the Quitman column, the other for the mill. They paused an instant to say something to the heavy batteries, and continued at full speed.

“General Pillow! The commander-in-chief’s compliments, and he directs that when the batteries cease firing, in a few minutes, you will at once proceed with your column to the attack.”

General Pillow faced his troops.

“Attention! We are about to storm the hill, my lads. We shall take it with the bayonet in thirty minutes, remember.”

“Huzzah!”