This Harpers Weekly lithograph from the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, is the best image I’ve been able to find of Matamoros in 1846, as the U.S. Army of Observation reached the banks of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo River. At either edge are the earthen fortifications thrown up by the Mexican defender and in the center is the steeple of the Our Lady of Refuge Cathedral, which had been built in 1832. The sidewheeled steamboats give an idea of the river’s depth. In my mind a person would have to have officer’s binoculars to see the women of Matamoros doing their laundry, bathing and swiming, naked as they had for centuries under their town’s bluffs.
Constructing the earthen Fort Texas did not commence until April 8. The following description of what happened on the U.S. side after arriving on the norhthern bank has been drawn by writer Peter F. Stevens in his book, The Rogue’s March, John Riley and the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, 1846-48:
Soon after the U.S. Army’s arrival, General Taylor, hoping to find out the conditions of two dragoons who had been captured by the Mexicans before the American army’s arrival and to size up the intentions of (Mexican General) Meja, had sent General Worth across the Rio Grande undre a flag of truce. On the riverbank, Mejia, who “was breathing fire at the propect of battle,” refused to meet with Worth. The Mexican general had sent General Romolo Diaz de a Vega to deal with the “Yanquis.” Since he claimed that he did not speak English and since none of Worth’s party spoke Sanish, the “negotiations” proceeded in French. Whe he later reported back to Taylor, Worth said he believed the Mexicans ready for a fight. Taylor agreed that the Mexicans would strike “as soon as they received enough troops to attack us.”
To assess Mejia’s current strength, Taylor turned again to Worth. Old Routh and Ready considered him devious—-just the man to send a spy into Matamoros.
Worth selected an unnamed soldier from the 8th Infantry. On March 29, the man swam the Rio Grande, “surrendered” to Mexican troop, and announced himself as a deserter. His captors led him to Mejia, and so glib was the alleged runaway that Mejia not ony believed him, but also offered him a catain’s comission to peruade other Americans to join him.
Free to wander Matamoros and study the Mexican redoubts, he “served’ his new army for one day, stole back to the rier that night, and swam back to Taylor’s camp without Mexican pickets spotting him. He reported: “The Meican have 3,500 troops, 500 are cavalry and are fine troop, the remainder are good for nothing, a miserle, half-starved set of wretches. They have about thirty pieces of artillery, none larger than a nine-pounder, and many twos and three and fours.” Other sources claimed that Mejia had ony 2,000 troops. Reinforcements under General Pedro de Ampudia, however, were marching to Matamoros. The Mexicans would soon outnumber the Americans.
Amid the disparaging description of the Mexicans by Worth’s spy, he unwittingly recounted an alarming development for the U.S. Army. Mejia’s offer to commision the man to raise a company of deserters heralded an evolving Mexican strategy aimed at Taylor’s men most affected by the tolling of church bell, the sounds of hymns that wafted from Matamoros churches, and by the priests who sprinkled holy water upon cannons and fortifications.
Through a network of spies, Mejia and other Mexican generals knew of the rancor between Natiist offirs and immigrants in Taylors ranks. The Mexicans realized that 47 percent of Taylor’s men hailed from Europe, mainly Irishmen, along with many Germans. So, too, did Mexican leaders recall the Nativist mobs that had murderously rampaged through Catholic neighborhoods in Philadelphia and other American cities in 1844. And Taylor’s foes were about to tap into the hard feelings permeating their enemy’s camp.
The hope of the immigrant troops that the nearness of battle would divert officers’ Nativism dwindled. “The donkeys are part and parcel of the Mexican,” an American captain stated, “as much so as the pig of the Irishman.” Angered by the daily sights and sounds of Matamoros’s Catholic rituals, many of Taylor’s officers simiarly ridiculed “popery” and “papist mummery and flummery” and professed their zeal to free Mexico from the “dead hand of the Roman Catholic Church.”
On the evening of March 29-30, 1846, just after Taylor’s bugles sounded tattoo, the general alarm send soldiers scampering out of their bivouac and clutching their muskets. Scouts had reported that at least 600 Mexican cavalrymen had crossed the Rio Grande and would fall upon the camp before dawn. American dragoons clambered atop their mounts to the bugle calls “To Horse” and galloped off into the darkness to engage the Mexicans, the jangle of spurs and sabers echoing as the riders vanished.
Officers ordered their men to sleep with their weapons, but sleep that long night came to few soldiers, open eyed, listening or the first distant crcks of the dragoons’ pistols and carbines.
“Nothing came to pass,” wrote an officer.” But, as the bleary-eyed troops pushed themselves from their bedrolls and mustered for assembly they noticed that the Mexicans had emplaced another cannon in a sand-bagged battery.
The following morning, March 31, a jittery American officer noted: “Two men, foreigners, swam the river and deserted.”
Grant and others worried that officers’ “harsh and cruel usage” on “these poor fellows” had driven the across the river. Captain Philip Norbourne Barbour and Lieutenant George Meade echoed Grant’s growing concern about the lure of Matamoros for immigrant soldiers.
On April 1 1846, as ‘the whole city turned out” to wish them good luck, the Mexicans released the two captured dragoons, and the pair regaled their American comrades with accounts of the Mexicans’ “kindness,” fandangos (dances), and the beauty and charm of the women.” The pair’s glowing accounts of life among their Catholic captors proved an immediate problem for Taylor and his commanders, for, in Meade’s words, the excaptives’ stories, combined with the enemy’s church bells and priest, “induced a great many desertions from our side.”
In response to the two desertions on the evening before the dragoons’ return, Old Rough and Redy issued “orders…verbally given to the several commanders on or about the first of April (1846) that all men seen sweimming acros the river hould be hailed by our pickets and ordered to return; and, in case theat they did not return, that they should be shot.” Taylor had taken the unprecidented and illegal step of ordering that deserters be shot while no state of war existed—-a blatant violation of the Articles of War.
Scarcely had Taylor isued his shoot-to-kill order before core of men defied it. Surgeon Jarvis recorded in his journal that 36 soldiers swam the river during the night of April 1-2 under the noses of the sentries, at last 14 deserters hailing from the mostly Irish ranks of the 1st Brigade. Riley’s unit, the 5th, accounted for many.
On the evening of April 2-3, more men stole from camp, hid along the riverbank until pickets had passed by, and slipped into the Rio Grande. Captain Barbour wrote on the next day: “We have lost about thirty men…by desertion…Several slaves belonging to the officers have left their masters and gone over to Matamoros.” The Kentuckian Barbour worried: “If we are located on this border, we shall have to employ white servants.”
Sometime during the morning of April 4, Private Carl Gross, a Frenchman serving in Company Iof the 7th Infantry, had decided to desert. He had plunged into the water that afternoon nd splashed toward Matamoros. Pickets spotted him and ordered him to stop. He kept swimming. Several muskets barked, and Captain Henry tersely noted that “he (Gross) was shot and sank.”
That evening, as the men gathered at their evening mess and discussed Gross’s death—-a warranted act to some, and execution to others—-two Irishmen, James Mills and Thomas Riley, both of Company H in the 3rd Infantry, sneaked down to the riverbank, eluded the pickets, dove into the river, and reached the Mexican lines. Riley, “a giant Irishman,” was no relation to John Riley.
On the evening following Mills’s and Thomas Riley’s desertions, the cracks of pickets’ muskets rousted the troops from their blankets. This time, however, the drums did not pound the long roll. The men returned uneasily to their tents. “Another attempt at desertion, and another death,” wrote and officer. This time, the slain deserter was Private Henry Lamb, a Swiss national who had attempted to flee Company D of John Riley’s regiment.
Taylor, faced with a growing problem he had neer anticipated, described his dilemma in a dispatch sent to Adjutant General Jones on Aril 6, the day after Lamb was gunned down in the Rio Grande. “Efforts are continually being made to entice our men to desert.” Old Rough and Ready wrote “and, I regret to say, have met with considerable success. Four, however, have been drowned in swiming the river, and two have been killed by our pickets while attempting to desert.” He hoped that his shoot-to-kill policy would “check the practices.”
Taylor’s order chiefly deterred desertions by day. But, as Captain Henry noted the same date of Taylor’s letter, “more of our men deserted last night,” one of them County mayo native John Murphy, of the 8th Infantry.
On the evening of April 7, 1846, southwestern breezes redolent with those languid, already famiiar sounds carried other familiar tones—the voices of deserters. As Taylor’s men peered through the darkness, they discerned several of the deserters standing on the Mexican bank, cupping their hands, calling former tentmates by name. They urged them to leave the U.S. Army behind and sample the “wine, women and song” across the Rio Grande. Several of the deserters, still it their American uniforms and speaking with the brogues of their old counties, hollered that the Mexicans threated all Irishmen and foreigners as friends and equals. Eventually, the voices ebbed inthe soft wind. But they would retur several times in the following weeks, with more joining, the chorus, remiding immigrants that “their faith was deeply rooted in their heritage,” and urging them to escape from the Americans.”
To grapple with the “general disaffection” seeping through is ranks, “especially foreigners..some of them not even naturalized citizens,” Taylor delared that “the most efficient measures were necessary to prevent the spread of the contagion” Nativist (General) William Butler wrote that “the sectarian treachery of the Irish deserters” could prove “overwhelming” for Taylor and threatened “the destruction of the whole American force.”
To combat “the…class of men deserting and crossing the river to join their co-religionists on the other side” Butler contended that American officers, if not Taylor himsef, issued a “celebrated order”: “Put none but Americans on guard tonight.”
April 8, 1846, proved a busy day for the guards scanning the river. As Mansfield and his engineers pushed the fieldwork detail ever harder, four or five men dove into the water in broad daylight. Sentries drew a bead on them, but never squeezed the triggers. The Rio Grande, running fat that day, wrestled them all to the river’s bottom.
Still, others attempted to cross. One leaped from a bluff into the water, and, as pickets took aim and work details stared, battled the current. He thrashed toward the opposite shore the guards’ rifles silent. Then, he neared the bank, clutched some brush, and crawled from the river.
Suddenly, a picket’s musket barked, and the deserter crumpled to the ground. “It was a capital shot for a musket,” wrote and American officer, “Being about two hundred yards, and must give them no contemptable idea of our shooting.”
Mexican soldiers gathered around the body, wrapped it in a sheet and buried the man.
The day’s toll for desertrs notwithstaning, “every inducement….offered (deserters) by the enemy” drew others to the river that night.” Among them was dragoon Private John Little, of Kildare, joining the scores of Irishmen greeting contrymen every night in Matamoros.
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