James M. McCaffrey - Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846-1848

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ARMY OF MANIFEST DESTINY

The American Social Experience Series
GENERAL EDITOR: JAMES KIRBY MARTIN
EDITORS: PAULA S. FASS, STEVEN H. MINTZ,
CARL PRINCE, JAMES W. REED & PETER N. STEARNS

1. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Shermans Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns
JOSEPH T. GLATTHAAR

2. Childbearing in American Society: 16501850
CATHERINE. SCHOLTEN

3. The Origins of Behaviorism: American Psychology, 18701920
JOHN M. ODONNELL

4. New York City Cartmen, 16671850
GRAHAM RUSSELL HODGES

5. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Womans Party, 19101928
CHRISTINE A. LUNARDINI

6. Mr. Jeffersons Army: Political and Social Reform of the Military Establishment, 18011809
THEODORE J. CRACKEL

7. A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community-Culture Among the Gullahs
MARGARET WASHINGTON CREEL

8. A Mixed Multitude: The Struggle for Toleration in Colonial Pennsylvania
SALLY SCHWARTZ

9. Women, Work, and Fertility, 19001986
SUSAN HOUSEHOLDER VAN HORN

10. Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union
EARL J. HESS

11. Lewis M. Terman: Pioneer in Psychological Testing
HENRY L. MINTON

12. Schools as Sorters: Lewis M. Terman, Applied Psychology and the Intelligence Testing Movement, 18901930
PAUL DAVIS CHAPMAN

13. Free Love: Marriage and Middle-Class Radicalism in America, 18251860
JOHN C. SPURLOCK

14. Jealousy: The Evolution of an Emotion in American History
PETER N. STEARNS

15. The Nurturing Neighborhood: The Brownsville Boys Club and Jewish Community in Urban America, 19401990
GERALD SORIN

16. War in America to 1775: Before Yankee Doodle
JOHN MORGAN DEDERER

17. An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 18201920
ANNE FARRAR HYDE

18. Frederick Law Olmstead: The Passion of a Public Artist
MELVIN KALFUS

19. Medical Malpractice in Nineteenth-Century America: Origins and Legacy
KENNETH ALLEN DE VILLE

20. Dancing in Chains: The Youth of William Dean Howells
RODNEY D. OLSEN

21. Breaking the Bonds: Marital Discord in Pennsylvania, 17301830
MERRIL D. SMITH

22. In the Web of Class: Delinquents and Reformers in Boston, 1810s1930s
ERIC C. SCHNEIDER

23. Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 18461848
JAMES M. MCCAFFREY

ARMY OF
MANIFEST DESTINY

The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 18461848

JAMES M. McCAFFREY

Copyright 1992 by James M. McCaffrey
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCaffrey. James M.
Army of Manifest Destiny : the American soldier in the Mexican
War, 18461848 / James M. McCaffrey.
p. cm.(The American social experience series ; 23)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 08147-54686 (acid free) ISBN 08147-55054 pbk.
1. United States. ArmyHistoryMexican War, 18461848.
2. Mexican War, 18461848. I. Tide. II. Series
E409.2.M35 1992
973.62dc20 9133517
CIP

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

For my wife Ellen

Contents

Preface

The impetus for this study began on a movie set outside of Natchez, Mississippi, in May 1985, when I and other history enthusiasts spent a week camping and working as extras during the filming of the television miniseries North and South. The particular scenes in which we worked were those portraying a battle in the Mexican War, and I quickly realized how little I knew about that encounter. A year later I signed up for a directed readings course at the University of Houston and chose the Mexican War as my topic.

The number of books available in the local municipal and university libraries did not begin to equal the volume of work on the Civil War, which had been an early passion of mine, but there was enough material that I at least became familiar with the basic reasons for the war and the strategy and major personalities involved. But I wanted more. I wanted to find out about the soldiers who fought in this war. I wanted to understand their social history.

Then I stumbled upon Norman E. Tutorows The Mexican-American War: An Annotated Bibliography. This book, just as the title suggests, contains an almost overwhelming listing of several thousand sources, both primary and secondary, published and unpublished. I spent the next two years completing course work for my M.A. and Ph.D. and poring over Tutorows book. I identified what seemed to be the best collections of soldiers letters and diaries and planned research trips around the resultant listing. And before delving into the various libraries and archives on my list, I read as much published primary material as I could. I then began traveling and visiting various repositories and gathering information.

The purpose of the present work, then, is to look at the war from the viewpoint of the common soldiers experiences. What prompted them to enlist in the first place? What did they think of the Mexican people with whom they came in contact? How did they feel toward their officers? Were they adequately supported with food, clothing, shelter, and medical care by their government? How did they spend spare time? If they broke any rules, how were they punished? What did the regular soldiers think of these temporary volunteers, and vice versa? And finally, having answered these questions, how did the American soldiers in the Mexican War measure up to their counterparts of earlier and later conflicts?

This is not a new concept, getting at the social history of the military. Bell Wiley was one of the early practitioners, with his Life of Johnny Reb and Life of Billy Yank back in the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, the Civil War has probably drawn more interest from military historians than any other American war, and Wileys success has led others to follow in his path. Notable among these later historians are James I. Robertson, a former student of Wiley, with his Soldiers Blue and Gray; Gerald F. Linderman, who wrote Embattled Courage; Reid Mitchell, author of Civil War Soldiers; Joseph Allan Frank and George A. Reaves, who focused on one particular battle in their Seeing the Elephant

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