People's History of the United States_ 1492 to Present, A - Zinn, Howard [99]
As the American armies advanced, more battles were fought, more thousands died on both sides, more thousands were wounded, more thousands sick with diseases. At one battle north of Chihuahua, three hundred Mexicans were killed and five hundred wounded, according to the American accounts, with few Anglo-American casualties: “The surgeons are now busily engaged in administering relief to the wounded Mexicans, and it is a sight to see the pile of legs and arms that have been amputated.”
An artillery captain named John Vinton, writing to his mother, told of sailing to Vera Cruz:
The weather is delightful, our troops in good health and spirits, and all things look auspicious of success. I am only afraid the Mexicans will not meet us & give us battle,—for, to gain everything without controversy after our large & expensive preparations . . . would give us officers no chance for exploits and honors.
Vinton died during the siege of Vera Cruz. The U.S. bombardment of the city became an indiscriminate killing of civilians. One of the navy’s shells hit the post office; others burst all over the city. A Mexican observer wrote:
The surgical hospital, which was situated in the Convent of Santo Domingo, suffered from the fire, and several of the inmates were killed by fragments of bombs bursting at that point. While an operation was being performed on a wounded man, the explosion of a shell extinguished the lights, and when other illumination was brought, the patient was found torn in pieces, and many others dead and wounded.
In two days, 1,300 shells were fired into the city, until it surrendered. A reporter for the New Orleans Delta wrote: “The Mexicans variously estimate their loss at from 500 to 1000 killed and wounded, but all agree that the loss among the soldiery is comparatively small and the destruction among the women and children is very great.”
Colonel Hitchcock, coming into the city, wrote: “I shall never forget the horrible fire of our mortars . . . going with dreadful certainty and bursting with sepulchral tones often in the centre of private dwellings—it was awful. I shudder to think of it.” Still, Hitchcock, the dutiful soldier, wrote for General Scott “a sort of address to the Mexican people” which was then printed in English and Spanish by the tens of thousands saying “. . . we have not a particle of ill-will towards you—we treat you with all civility—we are not in fact your enemies; we do not plunder your people or insult your women or your religion . . . we are here for no earthly purpose except the hope of obtaining a peace.”
That was Hitchcock the soldier. Then we have Weems the historian:
If Hitchcock, the old anti-war philosopher, thus seemed to fit Henry David Thoreau’s description of “small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power”, it should be remembered that Hitchcock was first of all a soldier—and a good one, as conceded even by the superiors he had antagonized.
It was a war of the American elite against the Mexican elite, each side exhorting, using, killing its own population as well as the other. The Mexican commander Santa Anna had crushed rebellion after rebellion, his troops also raping and plundering after victory. When Colonel Hitchcock and General Winfield Scott moved into Santa Anna’s estate, they found its walls full of ornate paintings. But half his army was dead or wounded.
General Winfield Scott moved toward the last battle—for Mexico City—with ten thousand soldiers. They were not anxious for battle. Three days’ march from Mexico City, at Jalapa, seven of his eleven regiments evaporated, their enlistment times up. Justin Smith writes:
It would have been quite agreeable to linger at Jalapa . . . but the soldiers had learned what campaigning really meant. They had been allowed to go unpaid and unprovided for. They had met with hardships and privations not counted upon at the time of enlistment. Disease, battle, death, fearful toil and frightful marches had been found realities. . . . In spite of their strong