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Updated: June 11, 2025
At Cerro Gordo the Mexicans opposed him with considerable force, but maneuvers, suggested by Lee, enabled him to outflank the enemy and drive them, without much trouble, from his path. Again at Contreras a check occurred, part of the army having advanced over a well-nigh impassable country and lost touch with the Commander-in-Chief.
Sergeant Hastings was slightly wounded by my side in the battery. Sergeant Starr was the ranking non-commissioned officer with the detachment of the engineer company which accompanied Colonel Harney's command at the battle of Cerro Gordo.
He understood the melancholy ring in Colonel Talbot's voice. He, too, like the boy's father, had fought under that flag, the same flag that had led him up the flame-swept slopes of Cerro Gordo and Chapultepec. "Here they come," exclaimed St. Clair, "and I know already the answer that they bring!" The small boat that he had predicted put out from Sumter and quickly landed at the Battery.
Clayley proposed leaving him behind and planning an apology; but a hint that he might be useful in "keeping off" Don Cosme and the senora caused the lieutenant suddenly to change his tactics, and we set out for Blossom's quarters. We had no difficulty in persuading "el senor gordo" to accompany us, as soon as he ascertained where we were going. He had never ceased to remember that dinner.
The lady whom he finally chose was a Miss McCracken, of Rochester, New York, with whom he lived happily for some years. At the battle of Cerro Gordo he was warned to be more careful of the bullets, but he replied, "Never fear; the bullet is not run that is to kill Martin Scott," and almost immediately fell from his horse pierced to the heart by a Mexican bullet.
That city was taken in about a week, and the way was opened from the coast to the capital. The advance began on the eighth of April, and ten days afterward the rocky pass of Cerro Gordo was carried by assault. Santa Anna barely escaped with his life, leaving behind 3000 prisoners, his chest of private papers, and his wooden leg!
After the battle of Cerro Gordo, our victorious troops pursued the enemy on to Jalapa, where the army halted to bring up its wounded, and prepare for an advance upon the capital of Mexico. The Jalapenos did not receive us inhospitably nor the Jalapenas either. They expected, as a matter of course, that we would sack their beautiful city.
That the thanks of Congress be and they are hereby presented to Winfield Scott, major general commanding in chief the army in Mexico, and through him to the officers and men of the regular and volunteer corps under him, for their uniform gallantry and good conduct, conspicuously displayed at the siege and capture of the city of Vera Cruz and castle of San Juan de Ulloa, March 29, 1847; and in the successive battles of Cerro Gordo, April 18th; Contreras, San Antonio, and Churubusco, August 19th and 20th; and for the victories achieved in front of the City of Mexico, September 8th, 11th, 12th, and 13th, and the capture of the metropolis, September 14, 1847, in which the Mexican troops, greatly superior in numbers and with every advantage of position, were in every conflict signally defeated by the American arms.
The leading division ran against the enemy at Cerro Gordo, some fifty miles west, on the road to Jalapa, and went into camp at Plan del Rio, about three miles from the fortifications. General Patterson reached Plan del Rio with his division soon after Twiggs arrived. The two were then secure against an attack from Santa Anna, who commanded the Mexican forces.
He met resolute resistance at Cerro Gordo, where on April 17 and 18 a large army of the enemy was attacked and defeated. At this point Nicholas Trist, envoy from the President, with instructions to treat with Mexico on the basis of Slidell's proposals of 1845, arrived. Trist was a clerk in the Department of State, and Scott refused to recognize or have any relations with him.
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