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Authors: Martin Dugard
Tags: HIS020040
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just deep and wide enough to give the Mexicans a powerful tactical advantage. They merely had to wait for the Americans to begin crossing, and then let forth a hail of artillery and musket fire. Taylor’s men would be stranded midriver, battling the current, incapable of fighting back, and soon weakened if not decimated altogether.
Yet Taylor was a wily general, capable of seeing a battlefield with the same analytical calm with which other men viewed a chessboard. One way or another, he needed to cross that river. Conventional tactics stipulated that infantry and cavalry should be sent across to wage war on the ground as Taylor’s artillery batteries bombarded enemy positions from his side of the river. His army was vulnerable if they tried to ford piecemeal. Crossing en masse was still somewhat suicidal, but at least then the Americans had the benefit of numbers: many men might die, but many more might make it across to do battle.
Instead, Taylor halted the entire army. By the time Grant arrived, days later, the northern bank of the Colorado was a scene of organized chaos: thousands of soldiers; hundreds of mules, horses, and bellowing oxen; and, from the other shore, the annoying blare of unseen Mexican bugles, blowing nonstop from the thick scrub.
A work party of American soldiers swung their axes under the glaring Texas sun, chopping away trees and shrubs to clear a trail down to the water, even as a second group stripped to the waist and wielded shovels to level off the steep drop from the banks down into the sluggish current. The soldiers might have looked like a very determined band of settlers, were it not for the artillery crews calmly aiming their cannons toward the Mexican positions, eager, after year upon year of practice, to fire upon a live enemy for the first time.
Grant was a compulsive observer, constantly watching and appraising so that he might understand a person or an activity better. He normally revered Taylor, a man whose disdain for affectation and military pomp mirrored his own. Yet as he studied Taylor’s inability to cross the river, and the logjam of American troops now exposed to Mexican fire, anger flashed through the young lieutenant. The Arroyo Colorado should have been easy to cross. It was only a hundred yards wide and not much more than waist deep. From Grant’s point of view, Taylor had made a mess of things by neglecting to bring along materials for a temporary bridge.
The lack seemed a glaring omission, for it had been known all along that the predominant geographical obstacles Taylor’s army would face on its path into Mexico were Texas’s broad, sluggish rivers, among them the Nueces, the Arroyo Colorado, and the Rio Grande. Yet neither Taylor nor his staff had had the forethought to bring along pontoons, an engineering novelty that had been developed during the Seminole Wars. Such an oversight seemed to Grant not only ludicrous but humiliating. If the American army was trying to intimidate the Mexicans with their professionalism, they were doing a very poor job of it.
T HERE WERE MORE than just buglers on the opposite bank of the Colorado. “Mexican lancers were on the southern side,” noted Second Lieutenant Pete Longstreet, “and gave notice that they had orders to resist our further advance.” He had no doubt that there would be a battle if Taylor’s army crossed the Arroyo Colorado.
Longstreet could hardly wait.
Since childhood, he had dreamed of being a soldier. And unlike those men whose dreams and physical attributes didn’t mesh, the strapping southerner was born to be a great warrior. He was tough, having spent his childhood roaming the rugged Appalachian forests. He was shrewd, a serious cardplayer who won far more than he lost. His personal charisma was so great that some considered him a giant, even though he wasn’t much more than six feet tall. But most of all, Longstreet was calm under pressure and deeply persevering. If the Mexicans contested the
Yet Taylor was a wily general, capable of seeing a battlefield with the same analytical calm with which other men viewed a chessboard. One way or another, he needed to cross that river. Conventional tactics stipulated that infantry and cavalry should be sent across to wage war on the ground as Taylor’s artillery batteries bombarded enemy positions from his side of the river. His army was vulnerable if they tried to ford piecemeal. Crossing en masse was still somewhat suicidal, but at least then the Americans had the benefit of numbers: many men might die, but many more might make it across to do battle.
Instead, Taylor halted the entire army. By the time Grant arrived, days later, the northern bank of the Colorado was a scene of organized chaos: thousands of soldiers; hundreds of mules, horses, and bellowing oxen; and, from the other shore, the annoying blare of unseen Mexican bugles, blowing nonstop from the thick scrub.
A work party of American soldiers swung their axes under the glaring Texas sun, chopping away trees and shrubs to clear a trail down to the water, even as a second group stripped to the waist and wielded shovels to level off the steep drop from the banks down into the sluggish current. The soldiers might have looked like a very determined band of settlers, were it not for the artillery crews calmly aiming their cannons toward the Mexican positions, eager, after year upon year of practice, to fire upon a live enemy for the first time.
Grant was a compulsive observer, constantly watching and appraising so that he might understand a person or an activity better. He normally revered Taylor, a man whose disdain for affectation and military pomp mirrored his own. Yet as he studied Taylor’s inability to cross the river, and the logjam of American troops now exposed to Mexican fire, anger flashed through the young lieutenant. The Arroyo Colorado should have been easy to cross. It was only a hundred yards wide and not much more than waist deep. From Grant’s point of view, Taylor had made a mess of things by neglecting to bring along materials for a temporary bridge.
The lack seemed a glaring omission, for it had been known all along that the predominant geographical obstacles Taylor’s army would face on its path into Mexico were Texas’s broad, sluggish rivers, among them the Nueces, the Arroyo Colorado, and the Rio Grande. Yet neither Taylor nor his staff had had the forethought to bring along pontoons, an engineering novelty that had been developed during the Seminole Wars. Such an oversight seemed to Grant not only ludicrous but humiliating. If the American army was trying to intimidate the Mexicans with their professionalism, they were doing a very poor job of it.
T HERE WERE MORE than just buglers on the opposite bank of the Colorado. “Mexican lancers were on the southern side,” noted Second Lieutenant Pete Longstreet, “and gave notice that they had orders to resist our further advance.” He had no doubt that there would be a battle if Taylor’s army crossed the Arroyo Colorado.
Longstreet could hardly wait.
Since childhood, he had dreamed of being a soldier. And unlike those men whose dreams and physical attributes didn’t mesh, the strapping southerner was born to be a great warrior. He was tough, having spent his childhood roaming the rugged Appalachian forests. He was shrewd, a serious cardplayer who won far more than he lost. His personal charisma was so great that some considered him a giant, even though he wasn’t much more than six feet tall. But most of all, Longstreet was calm under pressure and deeply persevering. If the Mexicans contested the
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