a fancy word for cannons to nonmilitary observers. Such naïveté denied the complexity of nineteenth-century weaponry. There were large cannons for heavy bombardment and fort defense, small cannons for mobile battlefield use, and mortars for lobbing shells great distances. There were cast-iron cannons and the more lightweight bronze cannons. There were guns and howitzers; solid cannonballs, artillery shells, hollowed cannonballs filled with explosives, canister rounds, and those deadly bundles of shot known as grape.
Bragg was adept at mobilizing and firing all of these weapons. Yet his favorite was the six-pounder (guns took their name from the heft of the solid cannonball that fit most snugly in their muzzle), the smallest cannon in the modern American military arsenal. Those small guns were perfect for battlefield use — light, horse-drawn, joyously mobile — and were quite effective against an army marching shoulder to shoulder into battle. But a six-pounder could inflict only minimal damage against heavy fortifications; if and when soldiers of the Mexican army swarmed the walls of Fort Texas, those guns would be ideal for close combat, spraying them with lethal rounds of canister and grapeshot. Until then, it would be up to the behemoth eighteen-pounders to lob down hellfire on the Mexican positions across the river. Eighteens were capable of demolishing almost anything. It was hoped those big guns could destroy just enough of Mexico’s defensive positions for the fort to hold out until Taylor’s return.
Scouts galloping into Port Isabel soon reported that Mexican troops had taken up a blocking position on the only road leading back to Fort Texas. That was good news to Taylor, for the Mexicans were now out in the open, right where he wanted them.
Not so for Grant. He was terrified and repulsed by the distant belch of cannons. He had no desire to fight; not in the open or huddled behind a bunker. He felt certain he wasn’t cut out for war. “For myself, a young second lieutenant who had never heard a hostile gun before, I felt sorry that I had enlisted,” he finally confessed. Yet Grant’s conviction that once he started something, he must continue forward until the thing was through, was stronger than any impulse to flee. The only way of relieving Brown, Bragg, and the Seventh Infantry — and returning home to Julia — was by pushing the Mexican forces back across the Rio Grande. Like it or not, war was Grant’s destiny.
He wrote to Julia. More than anything, he wanted to be sitting with her on the front porch at White Haven. “As soon as this is over, I will write to you again. That is, if I am one of the fortunate individuals who escape,” he said, trying to reassure her but failing miserably. “You don’t know how anxious I am to see you again, Julia.”
It crossed his mind that the letter might be his last.
SIX
Fort Texas
M AY 3, 1846
T he stranded soldiers defending Fort Texas left their tents to shave as the regimental drummers beat morning reveille. “We had just commenced washing, etc., before going to work, when the batteries of the enemy opened, and their shots and shells began to whistle over our heads in rapid succession,” a young lieutenant named Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana wrote to his wife, Sue. “They had commenced in real earnest, and they fired away powder and copper balls as if they cost nothing and they had a plenty of ammunition.”
Infantry soldiers sprinted to man the parapets while artillerymen raced to their cannons. Lieutenant Bragg and his complement of field artillery took aim at the Mexican positions as the four eighteen-pounders under the command of Captain Allen Lowd fired onto the enemy batteries. Each big gun weighed more than two tons. Standing on the breastworks, looking across the Rio Grande, the American troops could clearly witness the destruction their superior artillery rounds were inflicting. One enemy cannon exploded into the air in pieces, leaving
Bragg was adept at mobilizing and firing all of these weapons. Yet his favorite was the six-pounder (guns took their name from the heft of the solid cannonball that fit most snugly in their muzzle), the smallest cannon in the modern American military arsenal. Those small guns were perfect for battlefield use — light, horse-drawn, joyously mobile — and were quite effective against an army marching shoulder to shoulder into battle. But a six-pounder could inflict only minimal damage against heavy fortifications; if and when soldiers of the Mexican army swarmed the walls of Fort Texas, those guns would be ideal for close combat, spraying them with lethal rounds of canister and grapeshot. Until then, it would be up to the behemoth eighteen-pounders to lob down hellfire on the Mexican positions across the river. Eighteens were capable of demolishing almost anything. It was hoped those big guns could destroy just enough of Mexico’s defensive positions for the fort to hold out until Taylor’s return.
Scouts galloping into Port Isabel soon reported that Mexican troops had taken up a blocking position on the only road leading back to Fort Texas. That was good news to Taylor, for the Mexicans were now out in the open, right where he wanted them.
Not so for Grant. He was terrified and repulsed by the distant belch of cannons. He had no desire to fight; not in the open or huddled behind a bunker. He felt certain he wasn’t cut out for war. “For myself, a young second lieutenant who had never heard a hostile gun before, I felt sorry that I had enlisted,” he finally confessed. Yet Grant’s conviction that once he started something, he must continue forward until the thing was through, was stronger than any impulse to flee. The only way of relieving Brown, Bragg, and the Seventh Infantry — and returning home to Julia — was by pushing the Mexican forces back across the Rio Grande. Like it or not, war was Grant’s destiny.
He wrote to Julia. More than anything, he wanted to be sitting with her on the front porch at White Haven. “As soon as this is over, I will write to you again. That is, if I am one of the fortunate individuals who escape,” he said, trying to reassure her but failing miserably. “You don’t know how anxious I am to see you again, Julia.”
It crossed his mind that the letter might be his last.
SIX
Fort Texas
M AY 3, 1846
T he stranded soldiers defending Fort Texas left their tents to shave as the regimental drummers beat morning reveille. “We had just commenced washing, etc., before going to work, when the batteries of the enemy opened, and their shots and shells began to whistle over our heads in rapid succession,” a young lieutenant named Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana wrote to his wife, Sue. “They had commenced in real earnest, and they fired away powder and copper balls as if they cost nothing and they had a plenty of ammunition.”
Infantry soldiers sprinted to man the parapets while artillerymen raced to their cannons. Lieutenant Bragg and his complement of field artillery took aim at the Mexican positions as the four eighteen-pounders under the command of Captain Allen Lowd fired onto the enemy batteries. Each big gun weighed more than two tons. Standing on the breastworks, looking across the Rio Grande, the American troops could clearly witness the destruction their superior artillery rounds were inflicting. One enemy cannon exploded into the air in pieces, leaving
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