Heritage, Volume 13, Number 4, Fall 1995 Page: 12
30 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Mexican leader Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Photographic image provided by
Archives Division, Texas State Library, Austin."Two-thirds of the tents furnished the
army ...were worn out and rotten...
Transparent as gauze, they afforded
little or no protection against the
intense heat of summer, or the drenching
rains and severe cold of winter..."returned to Mexico, he was removed from
office and sent into exile. Because the
Treaty of Velasco was never ratified by the
Mexican Congress, it had no validity in the
eyes of the Mexicans.
Despite Mexican saber rattling in 1845,
the United States hoped that the government
of President Jose Joaquin Herrera, a
moderate, could be persuaded to negotiate
a peaceful solution to the two country's
differences. President Polk also hoped
Mexico would be willing to sell California,
yet another sensitive issue. When Mexico
responded favorably to inquiries, envoy
James Slidell was dispatched to Mexico in
November.
That same month, Captain Henry remarked
upon the transformation of the
town of Corpus Christi since the arrival of
the "Army of Occupation":
"One can hardly realize that the Corpus
Christi before us now is the same settlement
of scattering houses we saw upon our
landing. At the end of November its population
was computed at one thousand. The
majority of them are grocery keepers and
gamblers, who have come here to feed
upon the army. Houses appear to have
grown in a night. There are all sorts, from
a frame covered (for want of lumber or
cash, or both) with common domestic, to a
tolerably respectable one, clapboarded andshingled. A theater, of
no inconsiderable dimensions,
is about being
erected, and a company
of actors are anxiously
awaiting its
completion."
One change that
didn't bode well for the
soldiers was a change in
the weather. Often, during
the winter months,
the temperature plummeted by as many as
40 or 50 degrees Fahrenheit in one day
whenever a "blue norther" swept down
from Canada. In his postwar memoirs, Captain
Henry complained that the northern
wind "comes 'like a thief in the night,' and
all but steals your life. You go to bed," he
wrote "weather sultry and warm, bed-clothes
disagreeable, tent open; before morning
you hear a distant rumbling; the roaring
increases - the norther comes. For several
minutes you hear it careering in its wild
course; when it reaches you it issues fresh
from the snow-mountains, and with a severity
which threatens to prostrate the
camp. The change in one's feelings is like
an instantaneous transit from the torrid to
the frigid zone; blankets are in demand, and
no one thinks of living without a good
supply on hand. Ice has formed in pails
several times, and one morning, every tent
had an ice covering; the sleet had frozen
upon it, and the crackling of the canvas
sounded like anything but music."
One of Taylor's officers, Lt. Daniel
Harvey of the 4th Artillery, was particularly
moved by the suffering caused by the
cold weather. Critical of camp conditions
in general, Lt. Harvey wrote an article that
was published in the April 1846 issue of
"Southern Quarterly Review". In it, he
complained:"Two-thirds of the tents furnished the
army on taking the field were worn out and
rotten...Transparent as gauze, they afforded
little or no protection against the intense
heat of summer or the drenching rains and
severe cold of winter...During those terrible
months, the sufferings of the sick in
the crowded hospital tents were horrible
beyond conception. The torrents drenched
and the fierce blasts shook the miserable
couches of the dying. Their last groans
mingled in fearful concert with the howlings
of the pitiless storm.
"As the winter advanced...the encampment
now resembled a marsh, the water at
times being three and four feet in the tents
of whole wings of regiments. All military
exercises were suspended, the black gloomy
days were passed in inactivity, disgust, sullenness
and silence. The troops, after being
thoroughly drenched all day, without camp
fires to dry by, lay down at night in wet
blankets on the well-soaked ground."
Given the state of their living conditions,
it is not surprising that the enlisted
men, whenever possible, visited the army
theater that opened in Corpus Christi on
January 8, 1846, or frequented the town's
saloons and gambling houses. The theater,
wrote Captain Henry, was "a capital building,
capable of containing eight hundred
persons". Henry also recalled with fond
memories that "a very clever company was
engaged, and many an otherwise dreary
evening was spent by many of us with
infinite pleasure within its walls".
Not all the soldiers' amusements were so
innocent. In the saloons and gambling
houses drunken soldiers, angry about some
real or imagined offense, often fought each
other, sometimes with fatal results. A letter
written by one soldier, telling of the cold,
wet weather and alleging murders had been
committed, was printed in some U.S. news12 HERITAGE -FALL 1995
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Texas Historical Foundation. Heritage, Volume 13, Number 4, Fall 1995, periodical, Autumn 1995; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth45411/m1/12/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Foundation.