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Updated: June 28, 2025
On the 19th of August, 1847, Scott's army lay in and around San Augustin, a place situated on a branch of the main road running south from the city of Mexico. This road divided into two at Churubusco, the other branch running near Contreras.
He graduated at West Point on the 30th of June, 1837, and was at once assigned to the Second artillery, as second-lieutenant. In 1839, he was promoted to first-lieutenant. He served in Mexico, and was brevetted captain for gallant and meritorious conduct, in the battles of Contreras and Cherubusco.
For meritorious conduct at Cerro Gordo, he was made brevet major; for the same at Contreras and Cherubusco, brevet lieutenant-colonel; and, after Chapultepec, he received the additional brevet of colonel distinctions fairly earned by energy and courage.
The two aides found Loring himself, middle-aged and imposing, old Indian fighter, hero of Contreras, Churubusco, Chapultepec, and Garita de Belen, commander, since the transference of General Robert E. Lee to South Carolina, of the Army of the Kanawha, gallant and dashing, with an arm left in Mexico, with a gift for picturesque phrases, with a past full of variety and a future of a like composition, with a genuine tenderness and care for his men, and an entire conviction that both he and his troops were at present in the convoy of a madman they found Loring seated on a log beside a small fire and engaged in cooling in the snow a too-hot tin cup of coffee.
If Contreras, some three miles west and south, should fall into our hands, troops from there could move to the right flank of all the positions held by the enemy between us and the city. Under these circumstances General Scott directed the holding of the front of the enemy without making an attack until further orders.
I saw him again at Cerro Gordo, and we were side by side at Contreras, Molino del Rey, and the storming of Chapultepec. He left the service some time after we came back from Mexico, but I remained in it, until recent events. It is fitting that I should meet his son here, when we go upon errands which are, perhaps, similar in nature. I infer that your destination is Charleston!"
While the four were wrangling, the admiral called out to them in excellent Spanish not to dispute, for he had money enough to satisfy them all. Meantime the Spanish commissary general of cavalry, Contreras, came up, rebuked this unseemly dispute before the enemy had been fairly routed, and, in order to arrange the quarrel impartially, ordered his page to despatch De Villars on the spot.
"But as the movements actually ordered by General Pillow at Contreras on the 19th were emphatically approved by General Scott at the time, and as the conduct of General Pillow in the brilliant series of military operations carried on to such triumphant issue by General Scott in the Valley of Mexico appears by the several official reports of the latter, and otherwise, to have been highly meritorious, from these and other considerations the court is of the opinion that no further proceedings against General Pillow in this case are called for by the interests of the public."
When Pedro de Contreras, who remained on board the ships, got intelligence of the miserable fete of his comrades, he was so much alarmed that he would not take time to hoist anchor and make seal, but threw himself into a boat with some of his men, leaving the ships at anchor with all the plunder untouched.
Away yonder is Churubusco, and over there is Contreras. Didn't they fight us there! General Scott and his engineers laid out the battles, but I was with the Seventh everywhere it went. I'll have loads of yarns to spin when I get home, if I ever do." Battle after battle had been fought, and the Americans had paid dearly for the long delay in the arrival of their reinforcements.
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