Excepting Vera Cruz and Cerro Gordo, the scene of all the leading events of General Scott’s campaign lie almost within cannon-shot of the Mexican capital.
The four battles of Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec, which decided the fate of the war, occurred within a period of four weeks and within a radius of a dozen miles. The Mexican General Valencia was disastrously routed at Contreras August 19, 1847, and Churubusco was fought and won by the Americans next day. Then there was a short truce between the two belligerents, and terms of peace were proposed by an American plenipotentiary. These not proving satisfactory, hostilities were resumed. Scott moved with energy. On September 8 the battle of Molino del Rey occurred, the Americans winning, but at heavy sacrifice in killed and wounded. The successful assault on Chapultepec hill was made on the 13th, five days later, and on the morning of the 14th Scott’s splendid little army entered the Mexican capital and hoisted its flag over the public buildings. The belligerents engaged in these affairs were comparatively small and the losses on both sides very severe. The Mexicans fought well, but were execrably led. With the fall of Mexico Scott had conquered a nation with an army fewer in numbers than the single corps Longstreet commanded at Gettysburg.
Scott’s army, for the most part, was composed of veteran troops,—regulars, with a considerable contingent of fine and well-officered volunteers. Most of them were already battle-seasoned, having participated in General Taylor’s initiatory campaign of 1846 on the Rio Grande, where they had signally defeated the Mexicans at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterey. Taylor’s crowning victory at Buena Vista, February 23, 1847, did not occur until after Scott had drafted away the best part of his regulars for the march on Mexico.
Among them were the Fourth and Eighth Infantry regiments. Lieutenant Longstreet had served in both,—in the Fourth as brevet second lieutenant after graduating from the Military Academy in 1842, up to 1845, when he was promoted and transferred to the Eighth, and he was lucky enough to be with the latter in the action at Palo Alto, May 8, 1846, at Resaca de la Palma next day, and in the siege and capture of Monterey, September 21 to 23, of the same year. It was on these fields that most of the young fellows who afterwards became conspicuous in the Union and Confederate armies flashed their maiden swords.
In the Fourth, among Longstreet’s earlier official and social intimates at Jefferson Barracks and Camp Salubrity, were Captain George A. McCall, Lieutenants Augur, Grant, Alex. Hays, and David A. Russell, all afterwards distinguished Union generals. Captain McCall was then forty-three years old, and was graduated from West Point in 1822, just twenty years ahead of Longstreet’s class.
The subsequent Civil War produced some singular anticlimaxes to these old Mexican War friendships. It so happened, for instance, that sixteen years afterwards, at the battle of Glendale before Richmond, Longstreet’s Confederate division was pitted against McCall’s smaller Union division, and the Confederates had the best of it. About dusk, after the heavy fighting was over, McCall and his staff accidentally rode into the Forty-seventh Virginia. Curiously enough, the Union general alone was captured and brought to Longstreet’s head-quarters.
Having for a time been a brevet second lieutenant under McCall in the old Fourth Infantry, and really commiserating his personal mishap, General Longstreet cordially advanced, offering his hand and proffering such hospitality as was permissible in the untoward circumstances. But, deeply chagrined by his defeat and capture, McCall sullenly repelled Longstreet’s friendly advances. It only remained for the Union general to be sent back to Richmond in charge of a staff-officer and guard. It was the last meeting between the old captain and his former lieutenant, and, strangely, was McCall’s last appearance in battle, though he was exchanged in a few weeks. He somehow fell into disfavor with the Washington authorities, resigned in March, 1863, and died on a farm near Westchester, Pennsylvania, in 1868. McCall was a fine soldier of the old school. Grant was also a second lieutenant with McCall in the Fourth, and liked him very much.
Alex. Hays and Longstreet had been associated in both regiments. Like Longstreet, Hays was promoted and transferred from the Fourth to the Eighth, though upward of a year subsequently. Grant never left the Fourth until he resigned as captain, about seven years after the Mexican War. Hays and Grant had been friends at West Point, though not classmates, and very chummy afterwards while subs. in the old Fourth Infantry. The official personnel of General Taylor’s army, scant three thousand men, was so small that they were almost like a family. Everybody knew everybody else.
Hays was detached from the Eighth when Scott advanced into the valley of Mexico, but was engaged in several severe affairs in defence of convoys of supplies to the front, and also at Heamantle and Sequaltiplan. After that war was over he resigned, but in 1861 immediately sought service again, and soon rose to the command of a Union division. His division contributed materially to the repulse of Longstreet’s attack at Gettysburg on July 3. But poor Hays was killed in front of Longstreet’s lines at the Wilderness in 1864, the first battle in Virginia after his old comrade, Grant, had assumed command of the Union armies. Such was the fortune of war of the civil struggle.
The Eighth Infantry furnished from its Mexican War contingent few conspicuous leaders to either side in the subsequent Civil War. The regiment was compelled to surrender to the local authorities of Texas early in 1861, and were detained at the South many months. Only a few of its old officers then remained. All those of Southern proclivities had already withdrawn. Longstreet left the Eighth in 1858, ten years after peace with Mexico, having been promoted to major and paymaster. By detention as prisoners of war the Union soldiers of the Eighth were deprived of the early promotion which fell to the lot of most regulars.