Captain Mayne Reid returned from Mexico to the United States in the spring of 1848.
He spent the autumn and winter at his friend Donn Piatt’s house in the valley of the Mac-o-Chee, Ohio. Here he wrote the greater part of “The Rifle Rangers,” in which he gives us pictures of his Mexican life, returning to New York in the spring of 1849. The question was then going the round of the newspapers, “Who was first into Chapultepec?”
The following is an extract from a letter written by Mayne Reid in reference to the storming of Chapultepec, and in which he inclosed some testimonies of his part in the affair:
“These documents were hastily collected in New York in the spring of 1849, when I heard of other individuals claiming to have been first into Chapultepec. I do not claim to have been first over the walls, as I did not get over the wall at all, but was shot down in front of it; but I claim to have led up the men who received the last volley of the enemy’s fire, and thus left the scaling the wall a mere matter of climbing, as scarcely any one was shot afterwards.
“While collecting this testimony I was suddenly called upon to take the leadership of a legion organised in New York to assist the revolutionary struggle in Europe, and I sailed at the latter end of June, 1849. Otherwise I could have obtained far more testimony than contained in these scant documents here.
“Mayne Reid.
“P.S.—General Pillow was at the time using every exertion to disprove my claims, it being a life and death matter with him, having an eye to the Presidency, to prove that the men of his division were the first to enter Chapultepec.”
The following testimony was given to Mayne Reid, and, as he says, “generously given, as only one of these officers was my personal friend, the others being almost unknown to me.”
Testimony of Lieutenant Cochrane, Second Regiment of Voltigeurs.