Mexico (72 page)

Such pleasant diversions did not, however, make him neglect his*work at the plantation, where his wife, Zephania, was proving as capable as he in managing the female slaves; she taught them sewing, mending, weaving and cooking, so that the Clays lived well, dressed well and dined well. This satisfactory state of affairs might have continued indefinitely had not Jubal, on one of his visits to Richmond, dined with a group of military men who spoke with some heat about events that threatened the recently admitted state of Texas and indeed the entire nation.

"It's intolerable!" a major was saying. "When I was a member of the army's inspecting party, trying to decide how many forts and where we should place our new lands, I heard nothing but complaints about the continual threats Mexico was making against our borders."

"Didn't the Texans thrash the Mexicans pretty badly?" a naval officer asked, and the army man explained: "That fellow named Santa Anna, a brazen sort, who's president of Mexico and their leading general, too, won four or five stupendous victories against the Texans. But under Sam Houston, that fellow in our Senate now, the Texans finally rallied and beat him. Won their independence, too."

"And became a free nation."

"For a while," the army man said. "But don't make a big thing of it. In the decisive battle less than a thousand men on each side took part. A skirmish, really, but it did the trick. And I must give the Texans credit. They won that battle while losing only six men."

Clay could not believe such figures: "Did you say six?" and the army man said: "I told you it was a skirmish."

Clay persisted: "But you say it's the same Santa Anna who's causing trouble now?"

"When he got back home he refused to acknowledge that Mexico lost the battle, and the war, and Texas. He has hopes of winning it all back from us."

"Any chance?" several of the men asked, and the reply was unequivocal: "He's a damned good military man. If we allow him to get a running start, he could create havoc along our southern border."

"What should we do?"

"I'm told President Polk is just waiting for Santa Anna to move back into Texas. It's American territory now, and"--he banged his right fist into his left palm--"it's war. We move south in overwhelming force and crush that would-be Napoleon." His listeners nodded their approval.

In the discussion that followed, a businessman who collected cotton from many plantations and shipped it to England said quietly: "It behooves everyone in this room to consider the opportunities meticulously. In your mind's eye, draw a picture of our southern border. Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana don't touch Mexico, but everything west of there does. I believe it's land that can grow cotton, and the part that Mexico holds is the richest of all. Believe me, gentlemen, if we could take this Mexican head-on, whip him properly and force him to accept our terms in the peace treaty, we could take his land and win undreamed-of riches."

When the silence of his listeners indicated that they did not share his vision, he assumed that it must be because he had not spoken clearly, so he elucidated further: "The land we take from Mexico could grow cotton, gentlemen, and where cotton grows you must have slaves, and where will they come from? You can't get them from Africa anymore, or Cuba either. Our laws and British ships prevent that. So where must the new landowners look for their slaves? Not Georgia or the Carolinas. They need every slave they have. Alabama and Mississippi don't have ten extra slaves between them. Where the new owners will have to come is Virginia. We're phasing out of cotton. Every one of you men has slaves to spare. Imagine the prices you'll get if new cotton land opens up!"

Although Jubal Clay was a prudent businessman who could comprehend the financial advantages a war with Mexico might yield, he was, like his ancestors, primarily a military man, and now he asked: "How do you see the situation developing?" and the army man said: "Talk is that President Polk will call for volunteers, army and navy, to go down there and teach those Mexicans a lesson."

"Where do I go to volunteer?" Clay asked and the man said: "The public call hasn't gone out yet, but I can assure you that our Virginia Third has a few interesting openings, captain or better if you've had military training."

"Does militia duty count?"

"It sure does. How old are you, Clay?"

"Twenty-three."

"I could sign you up tomorrow, but at your age you'd have to be a lieutenant."

"My family for generations have been fighting captains. I couldn't settle for less."

The army man leaned back, studied Clay, lowered his head to stare at the table, then said: "Well, now. I'd sure like to see our complement filled out, but a captain? At age twenty
-
three?"

To the man's surprise, Clay broke into a big grin. "If you look in your records, you'll see I've been a member of your regiment since 1823."

"You one of those?"

"Yep." And the recruiter said: "If you mean it, by this time tomorrow I'll have you a captain in the Virginia Third," and Clay saluted, saying: "Like my father and his father before him."

But as the new captain left the table the businessman who acted as a wholesaler in cotton took Jubal aside and said: "Captain Clay, before you depart for Texas, you should give careful thought about this strategy of selling your slaves to whatever new territory we gather after a victorious war with Mexico. Do the proper thing in the next few years, and you can reap profits for decades."

Had Clay accepted his commission in the Virginia regiment one week earlier he would have seen service where he expected, along the Texan-Mexican border under the command of General Zachary Taylor, who was about to lead the invasion south into the heartland of Mexico. But he missed that assignment in which he would have served with many young men like himself who were destined for glory in the 1860s-- Ulysses S. Grant and William Sherman fighting for the North, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee serving the South.

His delay placed him not on a train heading for Texas but on a troopship leaving the navy yard at New Orleans for a speedy trip to Veracruz, where the Americans would fight their way ashore and then march up through jungle roads to Mexico City. When that capital was occupied, the war would be over. Soldiers in the expeditionary force believed they could defeat the Mexicans in about a month and were eager to get the job finished.

Sailing with them would be General Winfield Scott, commander in chief of all American forces in Mexico, sixty years old, white-haired, big in all dimensions and possessed of a furious temper and the conviction that everyone in the government at Washington and the army officers on their way to Mexico were plotting against him. But his military credentials were impeccable: fighting in Canada, heroism in the War of 1812, service against the Indians, and holder of every important position in the peacetime army. He was unquestionably the premier military man in the nation, and he intended his conquest of Mexico to be the glorious capstone to his fighting career and possibly a stepping-stone to the presidency.

Well before the voyage began on the little ship that would take him to his meeting with destiny, Scott started assembling a team he could depend on. Aware that he would require some trustworthy aide to copy the confidential documents with which he would bombard his civilian superiors in Washington, he was on the lookout for such a man. One morning he spotted Jubal Clay exercising on deck--a fine-looking young fellow, clean-cut, well groomed and most likely with a good education. As Clay ran past Scott growled: "You, young man! Have you a steady hand?" Clay stopped and, turning back, saw the general. "I've shot all my life, sir."

Scott bellowed: "I mean can you write a page that can be read," and Clay said humbly: "Yes."

As Clay worked in the general's crowded * quarters he required only a few days to discover that Winfield Scott, secure in the nation's top military job, was pitifully insecure in all personal relations but at the same time ridiculously arrogant. He was, Jubal concluded after a week's work, an impossible fellow, but also a man born to command. He said to himself, It's going to be a stormy war.

He soon learned that Scott hated everyone in a position of power. As a staunch conservative Whig he especially loathed President Polk, a liberal Democrat, but he also despised General Zachary Taylor, another Democrat who acted as if he too hoped to be the next president. His ultimate scorn, however, was reserved for Gideon J. Pillow, a pettifogging lawyer from a small town in Tennessee, who was so ineffectual that Clay could not understand why Scott even bothered with him.

"I'll tell you why," Scott thundered. "Because he was Polk's law partner, and the president assigned him to my staff to spy on me." After Scott had identified three or four, other spies among his generals, Clay asked: "If they're all against you, why did the army put you in command?" and Scott roared: "I'll tell you why. Because they knew I was the best man for the job, the only one who could force Santa Anna to surrender, and that I will do."

Clay, suffering daily proof of Scott's incredible vanity and his determination to fight every official to protect what he deemed his rights, wondered how such a man could lead troops effectively, but when in March 1847 the various American warships congregated in the roads of the heavily fortified harbor of Veracruz, Clay saw what a genius Scott was. "To assault that port with its fortifications," a junior officer said, "would mean enormous losses on our side. 1 do not want such a battle to start."

Nor did Scott, so with a masterly blockade to keep any Mexican supply ship from sneaking into the wharves, and calling upon all the firepower of his ships, he laid down such a furious bombardment that after a few days the Americans marched ashore, virtually unopposed. It was now a free run up to the altiplano where Mexico City awaited the assault. Clay supposed the march might take two or three weeks, the siege another three weeks, and the surrender sometime in mid-May at the latest.

What a surprise my grandfather had! March went by, then April, May and June, and General Scott was still working his way gingerly through the Mexican jungle, up steep paths, past well-defended forts and formidable cities like Puebla. When the subordinate generals urged more speed, Scott growled: "When I reach the capital I want the battle to be already won. Every advantage should be ours. I want a quick, decisive skirmish."

Clay made good use of this dilatory approach, and in a way he could not have planned. A Mexican scout who had volunteered to lead Scott inland in hopes of gaining American citizenship later, one Pablo Mugica, found that he too had time on his hands, so he offered to teach Clay Spanish, for a fee, and as June eased into July and August neared, Jubal gained a low
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level mastery of Spanish that surprised him, and he became valuable in interrogating prisoners.

It was on this long, tedious uphill climb that my grandfather became familiar with Mexico's constant revelation of wonders: the great volcanoes piercing the sky, the matted jungle, the handsome little villages each with its whitewashed walls, the silent valleys, the churches hundreds of years old, and everywhere the
Peon
s in their skimpy white clothes and their donkeys.

The more he saw of Mexico, the more he liked it, and while he never thought of living in such a culturally retarded place, the beauty of the land and the essential charm of the inhabitants' Catholic way of life did attract him, so that when other Americans, sweating up the hills, complained or denigrated the country as a hellhole, he was far from agreeing with them. He was not impressed with the military genius of its leaders, for with their enormous numerical superiority he knew that they should have been able to sweep Scott back into the Atlantic, but the people he met on his marches he liked.

His experiences with Scott as he toiled in the general's headquarters handling paper details were constantly surprising, for Scott seethed with hatred of Polk, Pillow and Zach Taylor as he encountered difficulties. His suspicion that spies lurked within his own staff increased, and for good reason, because he really was surrounded by men, usually political appointees, who hoped that he would fail and sometimes took active steps to try to ensure that he did. But he was also accompanied by trusted regular army generals who were as determined as he to achieve a victory. Always outnumbered and opposed by first
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class artillery under the command of Mexican army officers trained in Europe, Scott's subordinates acted resolutely and responsibly, even though their commander in chief seemed to enjoy abusing them and defaming them in his written reports. Whenever Clay read Scott's latest diatribe against his generals he wondered how they could obey his orders.

But Clay also saw the manner in which Scott sought diligently to identify which of his junior officers showed promise as potential generals, and these he praised extravagantly, giving them choice assignments and then reporting on their successes to Washington. Years later when Clay was trying to reach a mature assessment of Scott as a military man, he wrote: "Reading his reports on his juniors penned in 1847, it would seem that he was eager to pinpoint those young men who would prove the greatest Civil War generals fifteen years later in 1862. He was proud of having P
. G. T
. Beauregard on his staff, quickly spotted George C. McClellan as promising, and mentioned enthusiastically six or seven other young men who would become important generals."

But Scott's shrewdest evaluation concerned a young engineer named Captain Robert E. Lee. In the dispatches Clay had to copy he read repeatedly of Scott's high regard for this young Virginian: "Greatly distinguished himself at the siege of Veracruz ... indefatigable ... bravery under heavy fire ... an officer of great promise." But the dispatch Jubal remembered longest and quoted to his family most often came at the end of a message in which he commended both George McClellan and P
. G. T
. Beauregard: "Captain Lee, Engineer, also bore important orders from me until he fainted from a wound and the loss of two nights' sleep at the batteries."