Frigid norther brings misery to army camp (Texas 1845)

Soldiers stationed in Corpus Christi with Zachary Taylor's army - from August 1845 to March 1846 - found that wild mustangs could be had cheap. Lt. Ulysses S. Grant, who was a fine rider and loved horses, soon had four mustang ponies. A free black man named Valere, whom he and another officer had hired to prepare their meals and keep their tent clean, was taking Grant's horses to water and they got away.

Capt. W.W. Bliss, Gen. Taylor's adjutant, joked, "I heard that Grant lost five or six dollars' worth of horses the other day."

The men seemed to have spent a lot of their time buying and selling horses or racing horses. One soldier in a letter home wrote, "I bought a good pony for one dollar-fifty and saw another swapped for an old pair of soldier's trousers."

W.S. Henry wrote that almost every day for a month some kind of race was held. He described one race, for 300 yards, between two mustang ponies.

"One pony bolted, and, not at all alarmed by the crowd, cleared two or three piles of rubbish, knocked one man down, threw his rider, ran about 50 yards, stopped, turned around, and snorted - as much as to say, 'Beat that if you can.' "

At the end of November, Lt. Jeremiah Scarritt and a party of soldiers were put to work cutting through the reef that divides Nueces and Corpus Christi Bays (and which later served as the reef road). This cut in the reef on the Corpus Christi side would allow small boats to pass up the Nueces River to ferry supplies to the dragoon camp at San Patricio.

On. Dec. 3, the camp was hit by a vicious norther that came, as Henry described it, "like a thief in the night." Next morning, every tent, Henry wrote, had an ice covering . . . "the cracking of the canvas sounded like anything but music."

The temperature had dropped to 23 degrees and the cold stunned fish and turtles in the bays. Cartloads of fish and green sea turtles were gathered along the reef. Soldiers surrounded their camps with chaparral brush to help screen the bitterly cold wind. Henry said the brush made the camp look like it was set in the middle of an orange grove.

Since the first companies of Taylor's army had arrived, on Aug. 1, 1845, the village of Corpus Christi, with less than 100 in population before the army arrived, had grown to something like 2,000 people. There were lounging gunfighters, adventurers, gamblers, saloon-keepers, prostitutes - and all those looking to make a profit from the 4,000-odd troops camped here. One soldier wrote that there was Sodom and Gomorrah and Corpus Christi.

Henry wrote that "houses appear to have grown in a night. There are all sorts, from a frame covered with common domestic (cloth), to a tolerably respectable one, clapboarded and shingled."

A man named Josiah Turner, a carpenter looking for work, arrived from New Orleans. He stayed at a hotel on Chaparral, a one-story frame building run by a man named Moore. "There were a good many temporary houses being constructed with frame walls and covered with domestic sheeting, for saloons and different purposes; some for drinking, some for gambling to win the soldiers' money, and others for restaurants." Turner soon found work as a carpenter.

"When we came here," Sgt. George Donnelly wrote home, "the celebrated city of Corpus Christi consisted of about two good frame houses, seven or eight miserable huts, all of which were grog shops or gamblers' dens. Now it has 60 or 70 good houses, about 1,400 inhabitants, but I am sorry to say that more than two-thirds are of the lowest class of villains - men who are reckless of character and human life."

Lt. R.E. Cochrane, of the 4th Regiment of Infantry, had written his parents glowing accounts of Texas when he first arrived. But after he spent a cold Christmas in his tent, with chills and fever, he wrote home that "Uncle Sam made a mighty poor bargain when he got Texas, even though he did get it for nothing."

Gen. Taylor celebrated New Year's Day, 1846, by inviting his officers to share a glass of eggnog at his headquarters (a building on Water Street later known as the old Byington house).

The Jan.1 edition of Corpus Christi's new paper, the Gazette, reported that a play called "The Wife" would open at the Army Theater. This building had recently been constructed by army officers, led by Capt. John B. Magruder of the 1st Artillery. U. S. Grant had been coerced into playing a female role in one play, but the lead male actor kept breaking into laughter at Grant in a dress.

The Union Theater, at Lawrence and Chaparral, was built by a transplanted architect from Maine, Charles J. Bryant. The Union Theater that New Year's was featuring performances of "La Polka" and "The Ambassador's Ball."

Besides plays at the two theaters, Howses and Maybie's circus from New Orleans arrived to entertain the troops.

On Feb. 16, when Texas officially joined the Union, an "Annexation Ball" was held at the Union Theater, with music provided by army bands. The town's leading citizens and army officers attended the ball.

Among the officers at the ball were future generals in the Civil War - Ulysses S. Grant, James Longstreet, George Meade, Braxton Bragg, John Magruder, E. Kirby Smith, among others.

The rest of February was spent with intense activity in preparation for the army's departure to the Rio Grande.

Why move the army? It was still in position to protect South Texas. But if it had been placed at Corpus Christi as bait, it had not worked, being too far away to provoke any aggressive reaction. The army would have to be moved closer to Mexico, and much closer to the prospect of war.

This is the third of four columns on Zachary Taylor's army in Corpus Christi. The sources for this series include Caller-Times archives, as well as letters, diaries, books of some of the soldiers who were here: Ethan Allen Hitchcock, W.S. Henry, Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, Abner Doubleday, N.S. Jarvis, John James Peck, Ulysses S. Grant, Charles Masland, and Zachary Taylor.

This is Part III of a IV part series, but I thought it was appropriate with the current norther blowing into Texas!

The link will take you to all 4 of Murphy Givens columns, starting with Part I on December 1st.

On March 15, 1846, the New York Herald published an engraving by an unidentified artist showing Corpus Christi, with Gen. Zachary Taylor’s camp to the north. This sketch was used as the frontispiece to W.S. Henry’s "Campaign Sketches of the War with Mexico," published in 1847.

3 posted on 12/22/2004 1:41:23 PM PST by bayourod (Our troops are already securing our borders against terrorists. They're killing them in Iraq.)

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