Dead March by Guardino Peter

Author:Guardino, Peter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

CHAPTER 7

The People of the Town Were Firing

THE AMERICANS had mixed feelings about the Battles of Padierna and Churubusco. Padierna had clearly been a victory for the Americans and a disaster for the Mexicans. Some American officers wanted to see Churubusco in similarly positive terms, but the fact that the Mexican army had escaped prevented them from doing that. In describing both battles, the Americans dramatically exaggerated the number of Mexican troops actually engaged, and they often failed to mention that they were only able to overcome the Mexicans at Churubusco because the defenders ran out of ammunition. They also praised the courage of Mexican rank-and-file soldiers at both battles.1 A cynic might suggest that American officers did these things in order to emphasize their own prowess and courage. In any event, Winfield Scott did not immediately attempt to follow up on what his troops had achieved. It is hard to see how he could have: his men had taken severe casualties, they were exhausted and disorganized, they had little food immediately available, and Antonio López de Santa Anna had successfully pulled back to his secondary defense line, which cleverly used the lakes and flooded fields to force the Americans to take on fortified and garrisoned strongpoints. Scott might quickly face another Churubusco if he pressed on, and his small army could not continue to take those kinds of casualties.

At this point Scott and Santa Anna were both amenable to a pause in operations, and they quickly formalized this pause with an explicit armistice. As historian Timothy Johnson argues, Scott’s goal in this campaign was to bring the Mexicans to negotiate a peace that granted the James K. Polk administration what it wanted. An armistice would allow negotiations. Santa Anna was also interested in one. Although he had pulled back most of his soldiers to his secondary defense line, he had lost almost half of his cannon, as well as many men. Moreover, his secondary line had not yet been fortified much because Mexican officers had put most of their effort into fortifying the approach through El Peñon that Scott had avoided. Time was a precious commodity, and the armistice bought it. Santa Anna may also have believed that the Americans might actually offer peace terms that were politically acceptable.2

Polk had sent Nicholas Trist to negotiate an end to the war. During the armistice Trist met several times with Mexican representatives. In their discussions, representatives for both sides presented compromises that exceeded the instructions given by their governments, but they still remained far apart. The Mexican commissioners were willing to recognize American sovereignty over Texas but would not concede that the strip of land between the Nueces and Rio Grande was part of Texas. Trist agreed to submit the question to Polk, but that alone would have been enough to kill the agreement: Polk had to insist that this territory was part of Texas because his strongest justification for the war was that American blood shed there had been shed on American soil.

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