The Surgeon-General will organize this important service and designate that hospital, as well as the medical officers to be left at it.
Every man who marches out to attack or pursue the enemy will take the usual allowance of ammunition and subsistence for at least two days.
By command of Major-General Scott.
H. L. Scott,
Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.
General Scott to the Secretary of War.
Headquarters of the Army,
Tacubaya, at the Gates of Mexico,
August 28th, 1847.
To the Honorable
William L. Marcy,
Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.
Sir: My report, No. 31, commenced in the night of the 19th instant, closed with the operations of the army on that day.
The morning of the 20th opened with one of a series of unsurpassed achievements, all in view of the capital, and to which I shall give the general name: Battles of Mexico.
In the night of the 19th, Brigadier-Generals Shields, P. F. Smith, and Cadwallader, and Colonel Riley with their brigades, and the 15th Regiment, under Colonel Morgan, detached from Brigadier-General Pierce, found themselves in and about the important position, the village, hamlet or hacienda, called indifferently, Contreras, Ansalda, San Geronimo, half a mile nearer to the city than the enemy's intrenched camp, on the same road, towards the factory of Magdalena.
That camp had been, unexpectedly, our formidable point of attack in the afternoon before, and we had now to take it, without the aid of cavalry or artillery, or to throw back our advanced corps upon the direct road from San Augustin to the city, and thence force a passage through San Antonio.