On July 19th “the Pathfinder,” John C. Frémont, reached Monterey, and he, with one hundred and fifty riflemen, was sent in the Cyane to take possession of San Diego. The British liner Collingwood, bearing Admiral Sir George F. Seymour on board, was in port at this time, but there is no reason to suppose that the admiral was there in any other capacity than that of a spectator. Anyway, the Collingwood soon sailed from the coast. Then, on July 23d, Sloat gave up the command. He was in bad health and glad to escape the responsibility of the situation. The more vigorous Captain Robert Field Stockton took his place. Stockton’s first move was against Los Angeles. He had only three hundred and fifty men, all told, in the party that he landed at San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, and these were armed with only ninety muskets and a few carbines, but cutlasses and boarding-pikes were plentiful. Indeed, when some of the enemy appeared under a flag of truce, Stockton felt obliged to resort to a trick (since familiar to cowboys with cattle for sale) to make his force seem larger than it was. He marched them around some buildings in a way to make them appear as an army several times three hundred and fifty. He also covered up all the six-pounders in his artillery but left a thirty-two’s muzzle peering out as if by an oversight. The trick, it is said, succeeded well. Anyway, Stockton, after falling in with Frémont’s men, en route, entered Los Angeles without opposition on August 13, 1846. The next day the Mexican governor, Andres Pico, and General José Maria Flores, were paroled.
Perry’s Expedition Crossing the Bar at the Mouth of the Tabasco River.
From a lithograph designed and drawn on stone by Lieutenant H. Walke, U. S. N.
After that Stockton organized a state government with Frémont at the head of it. Frémont then went to Sacramento to recruit men for an expedition which Stockton planned against Acapulco (there were plenty of United States citizens in the California region), but before the expedition was ready news came that the Mexicans had rallied against Los Angeles, under the lead of ex-Governor Pico and General Flores, who had broken their parole. The garrisons at Santa Barbara were also reported in danger.
Sending the Savannah immediately from San Francisco to help the forces at the South, Stockton followed in the Congress on October 12th, having Frémont with “one hundred and seventy good men” along with him.
Meantime the Mexicans had risen against the Americans at Monterey. In fact, the Mexicans in the country far outnumbered the Americans, and it was only the difference in races that prevented the Mexicans driving the Yankees into the sea. However, Stockton landed fifty men, under Midshipmen Baldwin and Johnson, at Monterey and hurried on to San Diego. Here an attack by the Mexicans was repulsed, and then came Brigadier-general Stephen W. Kearny over the mountains with one hundred men from Santa Fé, New Mexico. Kearny’s men, aided by the sea forces, attacked the Mexicans at San Bernardino on the morning of December 6th; but were repulsed with a loss that was in a way significant, for eighteen were killed to fifteen wounded, and Kearny and Captain Gillespie and Lieutenant Beale of the naval squad were among the wounded.
Meantime Captain Mervine of the Savannah, had tried to march to Los Angeles but had been driven back. The Mexicans were fighting fiercely for their homes.
However, Stockton was the man for the occasion. Kearny was reinforced by two hundred and fifty men, and then he was able to march to San Diego. Next a force of nearly seven hundred men was organized for another attack on Los Angeles. The road thither was one hundred and forty-five miles long, and it lay across a desert of sand. The weather was cold, the men were poorly clothed. The Mexicans were well mounted and accustomed to the country. They disputed the advance stubbornly, and on one occasion, by a plan that proved successful on the plains of Patagonia once upon a time, they stampeded a herd of wild horses toward the American force; but the horses did not take kindly to the task of trampling down Yankee sailors.
