[5] Later on McClellan wrote in the diary on a page otherwise blank:
“On the 18th June, 1851, at five in the afternoon died Jimmie Stuart, my best and oldest friend. He was mortally wounded the day before by an arrow, whilst gallantly leading a charge against a party of hostile Indians. He is buried at Camp Stuart—about twenty-five miles south of Rogue’s River [Oregon?], near the main road, and not far from the base of the Cishion (?) Mountains. His grave is between two oaks, on the left side of the road, going south, with J. S. cut in the bark of the largest of the oaks.”
[6] Robert Patterson, born at Cappagh, County Tyrone, Ireland, on January 12, 1792, died at Philadelphia, Pa., on August 7, 1881. Came to America early in life and became a prominent merchant and Democratic politician in Philadelphia. Served both in the War of 1812 and in the Mexican War and in 1861 was mustered into the service as a major-general. He commanded the troops in the Shenandoah Valley and was outwitted by General Joseph E. Johnston who slipped away in time to join Beauregard and rout the Union forces under McDowell at the first battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. Patterson was retired from the army the same month.
[7] Tampico was captured November 14, 1846.
[8] Gideon J. Pillow was born in Williamson Co., Tennessee, on June 8, 1806. He died in Lee Co., Arkansas, on October 6, 1878. Pillow was a prominent Tennessee politician and was active in securing the presidential nomination for his intimate friend James K. Polk. In 1846 he was commissioned a brigadier general by Polk and went to the front in command of the Tennessee volunteers. In 1861 he became a brigadier general in the Confederate Army and is famous for having deserted his forces at Fort Donelson on February 15, 1862, leaving them to be surrendered to Grant the next day by his subordinate, General Simon B. Buckner. Also see Autobiography of Lieut.-Gen. Scott, Vol. II, pages 416-417.
[9] Later a brigadier general in the Union Army. He was adjutant general on McClellan’s staff and closely connected with him while in command of the Army of the Potomac.
[10] The city was captured on September 24, 1846, after three days fighting.
[11] “The people are very polite to the regulars ... but they hate the volunteers as they do old scratch himself.... You never hear of a Mexican being murdered by a regular or a regular by a Mexican. The volunteers carry on in a most shameful and disgraceful manner; they think nothing of robbing and killing the Mexicans.” Letter to mother, dated “Camp off Camargo, Mex.,” November 14, 1846. (McClellan Papers, Vol. I.)
“I believe with fifteen thousand regulars, we could go to the City of Mexico, but with thirty thousand volunteers the whole nature and policy of the war will be changed. Already are the injurious influences of their presence perceptible, and you will hear any Mexican in the street descanting on the good conduct of the ‘tropas de ligna,’ as they call us, and the dread of the ‘volontarios.’ And with reason, they (the volunteers) have killed five or six innocent people walking in the streets, for no other object than their own amusement; to-be-sure, they are always drunk, and are in a measure irresponsible for their conduct. They rob and steal the cattle and corn of the poor farmers, and in fact act more like a body of hostile Indians than of civilized whites. Their own officers have no command or control over them, and the General has given up in despair any hope of keeping them in order. The consequence is they are exciting a feeling among the people which will induce them to rise en masse to obstruct our progress, and if, when we reach the mountains, we have to fight the people as well as the soldiers, the game will be up with us. I have some hope, however, that when we leave this place, which has become a mass of grog-shops and gambling-houses, and march to meet the enemy, the absence of liquor, and the fear of the enemy, may induce a little order among them and bring them to a better state of discipline.” Letter of George G. Meade, dated Matamoros, July 9, 1846. (Life and Letters of General George Gordon Meade, Vol. I, pages 109-110.) Meade wrote further, from Camargo, August 13, 1846: “Already have they in almost every volunteer regiment reported one-third their number sick, and in many cases one-half the whole regiment, and I fear the mortality will be terrible among them, for their utter ignorance of the proper mode of taking care of themselves. The large number of sick is a dead weight upon us, taking away so many men as hospital attendants, requiring quarters, etc., and if taken sick on the march, requiring transportation in wagons or on litters.” (Same, page 121.) Also from Monterey, December 2, 1846: “The volunteers have been creating disturbances, which have at last aroused the old General [Taylor] so much that he has ordered one regiment, the First Kentucky foot, to march to the rear, as they have disgraced themselves and their State.... The volunteers cannot take any care of themselves; the hospitals are crowded with them, they die like sheep; they waste their provisions, requiring twice as much to supply them as regulars do. They plunder the poor inhabitants of everything they can lay their hands on, and shoot them when they remonstrate, and if one of their number happens to get into a drunken brawl and is killed, they run over the country, killing all the poor innocent people they find in their way, to avenge, as they say, the murder of their brother. This is a true picture, and the cause is the utter incapacity of their officers to control them or command respect.” (Same, pages 161-162.)
For further testimony of the same character see Luther Giddings, Sketches of the Campaign in Northern Mexico, pages 81-85; William Jay, Review of the Mexican War, pages 214-222; J. J. Oswandel, Notes on the Mexican War, page 114. Also see postea, page 37.