Ulysses S. Grant - Michael Korda [15]
It is interesting to note, for example, that in order to relieve the tedium of waiting in Corpus Christi, then a sleepy Mexican village, for the Mexican government to lose patience and go to war, the junior officers organized an amateur theatrical company. One of the productions they put on was Othello, in which Ulysses Grant, improbably, was persuaded to play Desdemona. James Longstreet (the future Confederate general) also played in the company, and complained that Grant’s portrayal of Desdemona was something less than convincing, and that he had to be replaced by a professional actress sent from New Orleans, but the sight of the future victor of Shiloh and Vicksburg in the costume of a young woman of sixteenth-century Venice must have been memorable indeed—a number of people who were present at Appomattox twenty years later certainly still remembered it vividly.2
More typically, struck by the huge herds of wild horses in the area, Grant purchased a large number of them at three dollars a head, hoping to sell them for twice that, only to lose his investment when they all ran away—a warning sign of Grant’s lifelong inability to bring even the simplest of commercial transactions to a profitable conclusion.
In the meantime the army had advanced beyond the Nueces, and when that did not persuade the Mexicans to fight, continued on, at a lethargic pace even for the day, toward the Rio Grande. In command of the army was Gen. Zachary Taylor, whose nickname, “Old Rough and Ready,” might have been chosen to emphasize the contrast between himself and “Old Fuss and Feathers,” General Scott. Zachary Taylor wore plain, dusty civilian clothes instead of a uniform, unpolished boots, and a slouch hat, and was in the habit of sitting sideways on his horse to observe the movement of his troops, with both legs hanging down over one side, as if he were lounging in an easy chair. It may be that Grant’s first glimpse of Taylor imprinted itself on his mind—or at any rate imprinted on it for future reference the notion that a general need not necessarily be a military fashion plate to succeed in battle.
Taylor’s strategy was to push toward the nearest big Mexican town—Matamoros, about 150 miles from Corpus Christi—a process that would take months, given the arid, uninhabited nature of the countryside, the paucity of wells, drinkable river water and fodder, and the fact that the army was moving at the pace of the mules and oxen that provided its transport. Eventually, however, Taylor got his army across the disputed territory and proceeded to build a small fort across the Rio Grande from Matamoras, a challenge which the Mexicans could hardly refuse, with the result that in April 1846 the administration, Wall Street, the Texans and the South finally got the war they had been looking for.
Grant was not overjoyed at the prospect—like General Taylor, he did not believe this was a just war, and he rather liked the Mexicans—but on May 8, at Palo Alto, he received his baptism of fire as the three thousand men of Taylor’s army, having finally encountered the Mexican army, formed a line of battle and advanced toward the considerably larger forces of the enemy. “I thought what a fearful responsibility General Taylor must feel,” Grant wrote later, “commanding such a host and so far away from friends.”
During the exchange of artillery fire that decided the battle—Taylor was equipped with more modern, longer-range artillery than the Mexicans, which fired exploding shells rather than solid balls—Grant was in the thick of things. “One canon [sic] ball passed through our ranks, not far from me. It took off the head of an enlisted man, and the under jaw of Captain Page of my regiment, while the splinters of the musket of the killed soldier, and his brains and bones, knocked down two or three others,